Transparency in multilateral climate politics: Furthering (or distracting from) accountability?

This article analyzes the interplay between transparency and accountability in multilateral climate politics. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for a “pledge‐and‐review” approach to collective climate action with an “enhanced transparency framework” as a key pillar of the Agreement. By making visible who is doing what, transparency is widely assumed to be vital to holding countries to account and building trust. We explore whether transparency is generating such effects in this context, by developing and applying an analytical framework to examine the link between transparency and accountability. We find that the scope and practices of climate transparency reflect (rather than necessarily reduce) broader conflicts over who should be held to account to whom and about what, with regard to responsibility and burden sharing for ambitious climate action. We conclude that the relationship between transparency and accountability is less straightforward than assumed, and that the transformative promise of transparency needs to be reconsidered in this light.     

‘Twelve-membered dependent origination’ an attempted reappraisal

Journal of Indian Philosophy -     

The role of the public sector in reducing regional income disparity in Indian plans

This paper is confined to an investigation into the role of the four Five Year Plans in regional development of the Indian Union. Section 1 of the paper is devoted to the weight given to the objective of ‘regional balance’ in these Plans; Section II outlines the ‘model frame’ used to measure the regional concentration, or dispersion, of economic activities and the redistributive features of the Plan measures; Section III deals with the computational sequence of the model; Section IV is confined to data processing; and Section V to analysing the findings. The main substantive conclusions are that the Public Sector investment activities in India over the period 1950–66 have contributed to reducing the spatial income disparity in the country.     

Structuring international institutions for the efficient provisioning of global security

This paper analyzes the issue of security provision by an alliance against the threat of a rogue nation. Proactive security effort by an alliance member is assumed to be non-rival and non-excludable, so the results of the effort jointly accrue to every other member. This effort has both positive and negative effects, as security measures mitigate the threat, but also involve loss of commercial benefits, collateral damages, and infringement on human rights. In this paper I suggest an institutional structure for the alliance which would lead to the achievement of the efficient level of world security through multilateral participation.