Operationalising participatory research and farmer-to-farmer extension: the Kamayoq in Peru

While rural poverty is endemic in the Andean region, structural adjustment programmes have led to a dismemberment of agricultural research and extension services so that they are unable to serve the needs of smallholder farmers. The NGO Practical Action has been working in the Andes to address farmers' veterinary and agriculture needs. The work has included the training of farmer-to-farmer extension agents, known locally as Kamayoq. The Kamayoq have encouraged farmer participatory research, and local farmers pay them for their veterinary and crop advisory services in cash or in kind. The Kamayoq model is largely an unsubsidised approach to the provision of appropriate technical services and encouragement of farmer participation. The model also illustrates that, in the context of encouraging farmer participation and innovation, NGOs have advantages over research organisations because of their long-term presence, ability to establish trust with local farmers, and their emphasis on social and community processes.     

New forms of environmental governance? A case study of Costa Rican environmental NGOs

Increasingly development theorists and practitioners view NGOs as catalysts of sustainable development. NGOs have been regarded as champions of democratisation and promoters of new ways of engaging in politics, with considerable influence on the development of civil society and new partnerships in environmental and social advocacy. This article analyses the ways in which Costa Rican environmental NGOs (ENGOs) engage in politics, by focusing on their perceptions of their roles in environmental governance and in representation of civil society. The results of this study suggest that the ENGOs' ways of engaging in politics differ little from traditional forms of governance, while their conceptions of engaging in politics without being political are novel. While most ENGOs had no clear conception of the stakeholders whom they were supposed to be representing, the notion of representativeness is complex and should be revisited.     

浅析诺思的制度变迁理论

诺思对制度及制度变迁的研究，始于新制度经济学，并最终通过对新古典范式的超越而达到自我完满。他把新古典经济学所舍弃掉的企业制度、产权制度、国家和法律制度、意识形态等制度现象纳入到了经济学分析的框架之内，运用成本一收益分析法和供求均衡分析法来分析制度的变迁，形成特色的制度变迁理论体系。但“理性经济人”假设和“边际分析”方法以及渐进式的制度变迁形式都存在着不可回避的局限性。     

Civil Service Reform in Latin America: External Referents Versus Own Capacities

In the context of state reform and democratisation in Latin America, reinforcing public institutions becomes critical to sustaining and consolidating realised gains. In this area, civil service reforms are critical. But civil service reform initiatives in Latin American countries were designed with different degrees of compatibility with countries’ administrative traditions and with the role played by the civil service within the political system. The results of different initiatives are described in a brief review of six key features of nine Latin American civil services. Discussion of these results allows us to draw conclusions about the capacity to generate learning dynamics. A new conception of the civil service and its role in the political system appears more evident, unless the required political consensus for implementing and consolidating the new reform strategy for most Latin American public administrations is not confirmed.     

Cheap talk,costly talk,crazy talk: patterns in North Korea’s English language propaganda*

This article examines the patterns in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (North Korea’s) use of hostile rhetoric in its internationally-directed messaging. The article first places North Korea’s belligerent rhetoric in the context of that country’s capacity to threaten the US and its Northeast Asian allies; indeed many analysts worry that Pyongyang’s rhetoric represents a conflict escalation risk or even a casus belli. Following this, the article discusses the common explanations – irrationality/incompetence, lack of audience costs, inter alia – for why the North Korean regime employs such hostile rhetoric, and finds these explanations wrong or misleading. The main analysis section describes the results of a study of 10 years of English-language propaganda published by the KCNA (North Korea’s state news agency). A multiple regression model is used to test the relationship between North Korea’s hostile rhetoric and a set of independent variables. The statistical tests indicate a mixed correlation of North Korean rhetoric to the independent variables. One major finding is that there is no correlation between hostile North Korean rhetoric and the country’s kinetic provocations. The conclusion discusses the role that North Korea’s rhetoric plays within the country’s larger adversarial relationship to the US, South Korea, and Japan.     

Why is there no securitisation theory in the Korean nuclear crisis?

Despite the fact that the Korean nuclear crisis is one of the most protracted security issues in the world, the research analysing the crisis from the perspective of securitisation theory is curiously absent. This article attempts to pin down some distinguishing features of South Korea’s securitisation of the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, thereby investigating why one rarely sees the implications of securitisation theory in the way that the Copenhagen School theorists would suggest. Borrowing the key components of securitisation theory—existential threats, referent objects and extraordinary measures—this article suggests three elusive characteristics of the South Korean actors’ speech acts as sources highlighting the dilemma. To make the article’s arguments clearer, I hold Floyd’s classification of securitisation theory, which separated the securitisation process into two different stages: securitising move and security practice. While acknowledging the importance of the differences between illocution and perlocution in a securitisation process, this article takes this logic one step further by suggesting the limits of the perlocutionary effect in making the securitisation process complete.     

Negotiating universalism in India and Latin America: Fiscal decentralization,subnational politics and social outcomes

ABSTRACT

This is the introductory paper for a special issue which focuses on an exploration of how vertical inter-governmental political and fiscal bargains and horizontal variation in political, social and economic conditions across regions contribute to or undermine the provision of inclusive and sustainable social policies at the subnational level in Latin America and India. The papers incorporate both federal, as well as decentralized unitary states, pointing to common political tensions across unitary and federal settings despite the typically greater institutionalization of regional autonomy in federal countries. Jointly, the papers examine the territorial dimension of universalism and explore, in greater and empirical detail, the causal links between fiscal transfers, social policies and outcomes, highlighting the political dynamics that shape fiscal decentralization reforms and the welfare state. This introductory essay reviews existing scholarship, and highlights the contribution of the special issue to understanding these issues beyond OECD contexts.     

内幕交易犯罪客观要件的认定——以美国对证券内幕交易罪的相关规定为视角

伴随着中国民众投资理财观念的不断增强,证券交易已经成为我国国民经济中不可或缺的一种交易形式。其中,内幕交易、泄露内幕信息的行为日益频繁,且呈现出行为方式多样化、主体多元化的特征。最高人民法院、最高人民检察院于2012年5月出台了第一部专门针对内幕交易犯罪的司法解释。由此,结合美国关于证券内幕交易的相关理论、法规和案例,对《关于办理内幕交易、泄露内幕信息刑事案件应用法律若干规定的解释》中所涉及的关于内幕交易罪客观行为规定所存在的问题,提出相应的修改和完善建议。     

Bounding the Commons: Land Demarcation in Northeastern Nicaragua

In north-eastern Nicaragua, territorial titling of communal lands conflates particular notions of ethnicity with proprietary conceptions of space to generate new forms of conflict within and between indigenous and black communities, and with mestizo migrants. Notions of rights between competing groups, or within conflicting normative frameworks, become increasingly polemic during demarcation. While analysis of three land titling case studies demonstrates that results are socially contingent and place based, trends include: (a) power disparities; (b) tension between 'traditional' and 'modern' patterns of land tenure and resource rights; and (c) contradictions fed by international conservation agendas and neoliberal economic reforms. Combining critical actor-based analysis with practical policy critique our work illuminates how contestations over the bounding of communal territories contribute to social injustice.