Developing Bureaucracies for Environmental Governance: State Authority and World Bank Conditionality in Laos

This paper considers the on-going production of bureaucracies for environmental governance in developing countries and the ways in which donor engagement is reshaped through localised bureaucratic dynamics. In Laos, World Bank conditions associated with the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project saw the establishment of the Watershed Management and Protection Authority (WMPA). I examine internal dynamics at the WMPA headquarters in Nakai District, including formal institutions for forest management, informal institutions for recognising local authority and wealth redistribution and the personal aspirations of WMPA officials. In doing so, this piece contributes to current discussions about donor-driven institutional change, practices of state-making and the local “technocrats” who are personally confronted by the complex intersections of donor conditionality and state authority.     

Informed powerlessness: child marriage interventions and Third World girlhood discourses

Child marriage has gained increased international prominence over the past decades. Organisations working with the issue have promoted empowering girls as the best strategy to address it. Informed by postcolonial feminist theory, this article will locate these discourses in broader ‘turn to the girl’ and ‘turn to agency’ in international development, analysing how Third World girlhood, agency, resistance and voice are conceptualised. Girls are constructed as threatened by their families and communities, with agency exercised through resistance and materialised by their voice. I argue that this ignores the complexity of decision-making processes and broader structural factors related to child marriage, so that interventions providing ‘empowerment-as-information’ for girls to be agents of change instead leave them in a state of informed powerlessness.     

COOPERATIVES FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS: A PROSPECTUS

The author describes research that addresses the problem of organizational change associated with the use of new information and communication technologies. The author focuses on the change processes associated with the use of the World Wide Web by cultural heritage organizations: archives, galleries, libraries, and museums. This research note outlines the research problem and the theoretical perspectives and research methodologies to be used in the research.     

Context and Continuity: Philistines,Pharisees and Art in English Culture

Cultural identity is an important facet of globalization, and cultural policy involves an international network of policymakers at the subnational, national, and supranational levels. It is often unclear what cultural identity means and who effects policy change, especially in a fast-changing world. The author examines one of the most important cultural policy conflicts of the last two decades to suggest that the intersections among multiple policymakers led to considerable learning through interaction and clear articulation of policy preferences. The author examines the culture war between the European Union (EU) and the United States over trade in cultural products.¹ The conflict played out in international organizations and allowed the EU to come together to articulate a somewhat coherent cultural identity policy, while the United States realized the difficulty of sustaining cultural exports in the context of provocative cultural identity frames.     

The Second Wave of Indian Investments Abroad

This article makes an assessment of the recent international expansion of Indian companies by contrasting it to the earlier – much more modest – wave of investments abroad. It also traces the evolution of the Indian government's policy towards outwards investments and makes the claim that an important reason for the rise of investments abroad is the gradual relaxation of the Indian government's restrictions on capital outflow after the economic reforms of the 1990s. The new Indian investments abroad are characterised by being dispersed over a very large number of countries and economic sectors and – most remarkable – Indian companies are now also targeting the markets in Europe and the USA through acquisitions of local companies. At the same time, Indian companies have continued to expand their presence in other developing countries, where their activities may contribute to both economic progress and a reduction of economic dependence on relations with developed countries.     

Reconstruction and reparations: Lessons from China and the Pan-African world

Abstract

This article addresses the role of the university and institutions of higher learning in carrying out the mandate of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. The active contribution of the university is anticipated in Article 98 of the Programme of Action published in the Report of the World Conference (2001), which clearly states:

We emphasize the importance and necessity of teaching about the facts and truth of the history of humankind from antiquity to the recent past, as well as of teaching about the facts and truth of the history, causes, nature and consequences of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, with a view to achieving a comprehensive and objective cognizance of the tragedies of the past.     

The world bank,health policy reforms and the poor

Over the years, since the mid-1990s, World Bank-prescribed health policy reforms have successfully introduced market-based private-managed healthcare model in the developing world. This article presents a portrait of the private healthcare model, explores the factors that facilitated the introduction of this model in developing countries and examines the impact of the model on the health rights and health conditions of the poor. It argues that health reforms designed to promote private-managed care in developing countries affect the poor severely and violate their basic health rights, the rights to stay disease-free and lead a healthy life. A host of factors produced by the private-managed care model, most notably reduced social spending on public health, dismantling of public health systems and the ever expansionary grip of private sector health services have effectively diminished the health rights of the poor.     

The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) - Pharmaceuticals Transitional Period: Can it Help Build Capacity in African Least Developed Countries (LDCs)?

ABSTRACT

African least developed countries LDCs face unique challenges in the implementation of minimum standards for the protection of IPRs, most poignantly illustrated in the field of pharmaceuticals. This was to an extent recognised by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in providing a transitional period during which LDCs are not obliged to implement the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement in order to afford them an opportunity to develop a viable technological base in the pharmaceutical sector before being required to provide patent protection for pharmaceuticals. This article explores some options available to African least developed countries LDCs to use the transitional period in a manner that could help develop their pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. Rwanda has already shown itself to be a pioneer in the use of policy flexibility available in the TRIPS Agreement and related instruments to fulfil the country's demand for essential pharmaceutical products. Therefore, much of the analysis draws on Rwanda for illustrative purposes.     

'Good Governance': The Rise and Decline of a Policy Metaphor?

This study aims to explore the conditions under which the criterion of 'good governance' first became adopted as a donor policy metaphor and now seems likely to get eclipsed. Why did it emerge at the time it did, and what, since then, has been its track record? Particular attention will be given in this regard to successive shifts in the relevant policy thinking within the World Bank. Moreover, the study discusses whether good governance is likely to keep drawing the same level of attention as it has done hitherto.     

Discourses on Poverty: emerging perspectives on a caring economy

In The Real Wealth of Nations, Eisler proposes a holistic view of the economy, which would include the caring sectors—the household, unpaid community work and the environment—as an alternative to market-oriented economic models that have proven ineffective in dealing with the problems facing our local and global communities. Her inclusion of language change as part of a strategy for economic transformation implicitly recognises the socially constitutive function of discourse, a notion put forth by critical linguists. Based on these economic and linguistic perspectives, this article reports on a study that examined the social knowledge about poverty constructed through selected discourses to determine whether they communicate a narrow or holistic view of the economy. It proposes that economic planning for poverty reduction build upon the process of language change towards a caring economy as revealed by the study.