The legal regime for application of the precautionary principle in India: future directions for the GM regulatory regime

The precautionary principle is one of the most contentious principles in contemporary international legal developments. The very fact that it is a principle of international environmental law has been questioned by many legal scholars. However, this does not take away the fact that the precautionary principle continues to be applied widely across sectors both internationally and nationally. The nature and scope of its application has varied widely according to the context and sector within which it has been applied. The central issue which this article seeks to address is the regulatory and the policy making space that is available to the Government of India in the context of the obligations as undertaken under the Cartagena Protocol and under various other international treaties. The regulatory space would also be affected by the domestic legal developments across sectors in which the principle has been applied. India’s recent decision on the large-scale commercialisation of Bt-Cotton has already created much debate regarding its appropriateness given the realities of Indian farm practices. More specifically, it has also led to a rethinking of the role and application of the precautionary principle in addressing these realities. Considering that the Indian policy on biotechnology is currently being drafted, it is important to look into the scope of applying the precautionary principle in taking any decision on genetically modified organisms (GMO) in terms of their distribution of risks, incorporating the social and equity impacts of such decisions.

Open source software (OSS) governance in the organisation

Going into the century's second decade, Open Source Software (OSS) is ubiquitous. But there remains a disconnect between OSS use and its effective management. In order to ensure that OSS is used in a way which complies with relevant licence requirements and reduces risk (for example, of adverse action from the OSS community and IP leakage through unintended application of the ‘copyleft’ terms of the GPL2); organisations should consider putting in place an effective OSS governance mechanism. OSS governance should take account of the people context, seeking to get buy-in from all stakeholder groups inside and outside the organisation. The high-level OSS strategy should then be agreed between the stakeholders, consistently with other statements of operational strategy. The next level down is the OSS policy statement, which should be clear, brief, event-driven, able to settle 80% of OSS decisions arising day to day and set out what information is to be collected and tracked. Finally, appropriate processes should be put in place to take the strain of OSS governance. Organisations should consider appointing an Open Source Compliance Officer and acquiring a software based indicator tool enabling a number of key governance processes (code review, setting agreed ‘do's and dont's’) to be automated.     

晚近国际投资争端解决实践之评判:“全球治理”理论的引入

晚近国际投资争端的性质已由以往的政治性争端转变为现行的管理性争端,相应地,国际投资争端的传统外交保护解决方式也已为国际仲裁方式所取代,而且国际投资争端仲裁实践出现了明显的偏袒外国投资者,损害东道国权益之倾向。就此,已难以用传统的南北矛盾理论框定,而现有的商事仲裁理论和国内公法理论则存在着不同程度的缺失,需要引入一种视野更为宽广的全球治理理论予以弥补。     

公共治理的基本结构:模型的建构与应用

公共治理结构影响利害相关者的公民资格、协商合作的有效性以及权利与义务、利益与负担的分配,是公共治理的首要主题。公共治理基本结构是由利害相关的普通公民、专业人士、职业公务人员、政治领导组成的四位一体的模型,遵循着共和主义政体"混合"与"均衡"的基本原理。中国特色社会主义公共治理,实行"党委领导、政府负责、社会协同、公众参与"的基本结构,需要党与政府各司其职,政府承担起扶助者、服务者、引导者和执行者的责任。     

The visual politics of corruption

Despite the fact that corruption is essentially invisible, communication campaigns by the global anti-corruption industry regularly feature photographic images. So far, however, we do not know much about the narratives that are encoded in these images. Through the theoretical lens of postcolonialism, this paper takes a first step towards developing an understanding of the visual representation of corruption. Specifically, the paper applies semiotic and iconographic methods to two photography competitions run by Transparency International – the major non-governmental player in the anti-corruption industry. The analysis shows, first, that the anti-corruption industry reinforces colonial stereotypes, suggesting that the ‘sinful’ and ‘irrational’ Global South is waiting to be civilised by the North. Second, through its visual imagery, the anti-corruption industry also emphasises ideas of a ‘humanitarian family’, which serves to cover up the North’s role in transnational webs of corruption. These findings are triangulated with semiotic/iconographic analyses of the Transparency International logo and the Corruption Perceptions Index map.     

The regional brand: collective image consciousness in Africa and Southeast Asia

States in the same region are bound together by the ways in which the world imagines them as a collective. One distinguishing feature of post-Cold War regionalism is its outward orientation – the importance of the external dimension of regional cooperation. By and large, though, existing analysis of regional institutional development in the Global South does not explicitly conceptualise and theorise collective image consciousness and management. This paper works to address this conceptual gap. Making use of two cases of regional image crisis – post-1980s Africa and post-1997 Southeast Asia – it draws out two primary logics of regional image consciousness: the logic of influence and the logic of resources. A region’s ‘brand’ with respect to (dys)function and international norm (non-)compliance matters to regional actors because it affects the region’s political influence in international arenas and the region’s ability to attract resources from donors and investors.     

Global international relations and the Arab Spring: the Maghreb’s challenge to the EU

Abstract

This article contributes to the Global International Relations project by critically evaluating the roles ascribed to Europe and the EU by Levitsky and Way in their model for explaining regime transitions. Focusing primarily on their international dimensions of linkage and leverage, it assesses both the normative geopolitical underpinnings and explanatory power of their thesis, drawing on the North African cases of Tunisia and Mauritania at the start of the Arab Spring to illustrate and substantiate its observations and arguments. It concludes that the EU’s failure to discipline either country’s competitive authoritarian regime raises important questions about the validity of the privileged role in which they cast Europe.     

环境污染、集体抗争与行动机制：以长三角地区为例

长三角地区环境污染引发的集体抗争事件说明,任何一种抗争事件的发生不仅包含内在机理：道义先占、利益影响、行动联盟和政治机会结构,还包括行动机制：触发机制、动员机制、扩散机制和回应机制。抗争事件将政府卷入其中,考验政府预防和化解此类事件的能力。政府可以从事件发生的基础性机理和情境性机制的不同环节人手,建构一套治理集体抗争事件的完整有效的框架模式。     

Urban unemployment and optimal tax policy in a small,open dual economy

This paper analyses optimal tax policies in a two‐sector model of an LDC, similar to that of Harris and Todaro [1970]. The analysis assumes a small, open economy with a non‐competitive urban wage which depends on prices of both agricultural and manufactured goods. Optimal policies are considered for cases where an employment subsidy in manufacturing and/or taxes on international trade are the only feasible instruments, and where government revenue has an excess burden. Comparisons are made with results obtained by Harris and Todaro, Hagen, and Bhagwati and Srinivasan, for similar models.     

新加坡公共服务模式对我国的启示——基于网络化治理视角的分析

本文以公共行政范式的演变为出发点,提出网络化治理兴起的必然性,并基于网络化治理视角从多元化合作、公共利益导向、政府与民众互信以及相关技术手段等方面对新加坡的公共服务模式进行分析,提出网络化治理视角下新加坡公共服务模式对我国的几点启示。