Suchergebnisse

The article interrogates whether the social science scholarship on the political authority of organised crime in Brazil can serve as an analytical framework to understand the violent underpinnings of the Bolsonaro presidency. Reviewing ethnographic work on criminal governance groups in Brazil alongside judicial documents detailing the links between Bolsonaro and militia operatives as well as statements given by the president regarding organised crime and gun ownership indicates that criminal governance finds ideological support and functional resonance in the Bolsonaro administration. The interchange between organised crime and state criminality demands urgent dialogue between urban activists and ethnographers in Brazil.

We critically assess the Appellate Body (AB) report on the Brazil-Taxation dispute, taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan, and encompassing seven different Brazilian industrial programmes granting tax benefits to different firms and products. The trigger of the dispute was most likely the automotive sector programme, instituted under pressure from the local industry and without much attention to effects on consumers or imports. The resulting WTO case underscores some salient issues related to the WTO-compatibility of subsidy programmes, in particular the application of the National Treatment rules to subsidies provided exclusively to domestic producers, and the identification of local content requirements, prohibited under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM). The AB diverged from the panel report and its jurisprudence on those issues. The AB tried to reconcile the existence of legitimate eligibility criteria in subsidy programmes and their discriminatory features with WTO rules under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the SCM. However, the legal test, developed by the AB in this dispute to distinguish prohibited local content requirements from legitimate eligibility criteria, may facilitate circumvention of the SCM prohibition of local content requirements and have important impacts on trade flows.

This thesis examines the foreign policy evolution of Japan from the time of its modernization during the mid-nineteenth century though the present. It is argued that infringements upon Japanese sovereignty and geopolitical vulnerabilities have conditioned Japanese leaders towards power seeking policy objectives. The core variables of statehood, namely power and sovereignty, and the perception of state elites are traced over this broad time period to provide a historical foundation for framing contemporary analyses of Japanese foreign policy. To facilitate this research, a unique framework that accounts for both the foreign policy preferences of Japanese leaders and the external constraints of the international system is developed. Neoclassical realist understandings of self-help and relative power distributions form the basis of the presented analysis, while constructivism offers crucial insights into ideational factors that influence state elites. Social Identity Theory, a social psychology theory that examines group behavior, is integrated to conceptualize the available policy options. Surveying Japanese foreign policy through this framework clarifies the seemingly irreconcilable shifts in Japan's foreign policy history and clearly delineates between political groups that embody distinct policy strategies and norms. Consequently, the main contribution of this thesis lies in the development of a theoretical framework that is uniquely positioned to identify historical trends in foreign policy. Owing to the numerous shifts in modern Japan's foreign policy history, this research identifies and examines three distinguishable Japanese "states": Meiji Japan (1868 - 1912), Imperial Japan (1912 - 1945), and postwar Japan (1945 - present).

"Nachdem das klassische Status attainment-Modell Peter Blaus und Otis Duncans die Sozialstrukturanalyse lange Zeit geprägt hat, betonen neuere Analysen zunehmend (wieder) die Rolle von Persönlichkeitseigenschaften - etwa vererbte genetische Unterschiede, Begabung, Motivation, sprachliche Kompetenz oder Selbstbewusstsein - zur Erklärung von Bildungsbeteiligung und Arbeitsmarkterfolg. Der Vortrag greift in diesem Zusammenhang die Frage auf, ob mit diesen Forschungsergebnissen der modernisierungstheoretische Konsens der soziologischen Ungleichheitsforschung ernsthaft gefährdet ist, wonach die Entkopplung von Bildungschancen und wirtschaftlichen wie kulturellen Ressourcen der Herkunftsfamilien in zentraler Weise zur Verringerung gesellschaftlicher Ungleichheit wie zur Steigerung gesellschaftlichen Wohlstands beiträgt. Dazu wird eine theoretische Modellierung des Zusammenhangs von Persönlichkeitseigenschaften, Bildungsentscheidungen und Arbeitsmarkterfolg vorgeschlagen, in der individuelle Akteure neben ihren wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Herkunftsressourcen über eine Persönlichkeitseigenschaft - Talent - verfügen, welche sowohl die schulische Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit wie auch die arbeitsmarktlichen Erträge von Bildungsinvestitionen erhöht. Es lässt sich formal unmittelbar ableiten, dass sich eine egalitäre Bildungspolitik als umso erfolgreicher erweist, je bedeutender der Einfluss der Persönlichkeitseigenschaft für die späteren Arbeitsmarktchancen und je schwächer die Korrelation zwischen Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen und Herkunftsressourcen empirisch ausfällt. Eine Bildungspolitik, die unteren und mittleren Schichten Zugang zu Bildung verschafft, ist nach diesem Modell deshalb erfolgreich, weil diese neu eröffneten Zugänge von überdurchschnittlich talentierten Kindern wahrgenommen werden, die diese höhere Bildung im späteren Erwerbsleben aufgrund einer Kombination von formaler Bildung und Talent produktiv einsetzen können. Das theoretische Argument wird durch empirische Analysen auf der Basis des sozio-ökonomischen Panels gestützt, die zeigen, dass egalisierende bildungspolitische Maßnahmen zu Bildungsinvestitionen geführt haben, die mit überdurchschnittlich hohen Lohn- und Einkommenserträgen verbunden waren." (Autorenreferat)

This article suggests an organizational or institutional explanation of economic policy patterns which differs significantly from state- or society-centered explanations and those based on international factors. Bankers' alliances, defined as interest coalitions of public and private financiers, play an important role in shaping economic policy. The stronger the bankers' alliance, the more likely that long-run economic policy patterns will feature orthodox policies such as tight monetary policy and limited government intervention in financial or foreign exchange markets. The historical organization of state economic agencies, and of capital, create national environments more or less conducive to formation of strong bankers' alliances. The three key variables center on: (a) the timing and actors involved in central bank formation, (b) the relationship between the central bank and other state economic policy-making agencies, and (c) the extent of conglomeration between industrial and financial enterprises and its impact on state control of investment financing. Comparative history of the Mexican and Brazilian cases provides preliminary evidence with which to explore the proposed relationship between organizational features of the state and capital, the political influence of bankers' alliances, and economic policy patterns.

Abstract
REDD+ is often characterised as a 'global' environmental framework implemented in tropical forests around the world. Yet studying actual cases of REDD+ can reveal complex interactions between scales, including under-recognised innovations at subnational and local scales. To understand these dynamics, this article brings together academics and policymakers to analyse the System of Incentives for Environmental Services (SISA)—a pioneering subnational policy in the Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil that includes a prominent jurisdictional REDD+ programme. While institutions, people, and ideas from outside of Acre contributed to its formulation, SISA is not a standardised local expression of a global policy. Rather, key aspects of it originated in ongoing and historical Acrean forest-use and governance. This analysis shows how innovative, place-based conservation policy can be influential, both within and beyond specific localities, in ways that challenge analyses of REDD+ that are primarily top-down. Our study of SISA also shows how topics of importance in contemporary REDD+ and forest conservation scholarship—efforts to make the living forest valuable, non-carbon social and environmental "co-benefits," and landscape- and jurisdiction-wide approaches to combating deforestation—are connected to Acrean forest governance and history. Overall, this analysis elucidates the strengths and challenges of subnational forest governance and the complex inter-scalar dynamics in REDD+ and other conservation and climate policies.

Portuguese abstract: rb.gy/08phn

The Brazil-Taxation dispute concerns the complaints taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan against seven different Brazilian industrial subsidy programmes. One concerned the automotive sector and represents a clear case of policies dictated by strong domestic political-economy forces, with little attention to impacts on consumers or imports. The ensuing WTO dispute raises important issues concerning the WTO-compatibility of subsidy measures. In particular, the Appellate Body (AB) reversed the panel findings with respect to two issues: the extent to which subsidy measures can be exempted from complying with National Treatment rules under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the identification of local content requirements (LCRs), which are prohibited under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM). In particular, the AB considered that subsidies, if not based on discriminatory taxation, could be justified under the GATT and could have some discriminatory elements without violating the National Treatment disciplines. Furthermore, it concluded that legitimate eligibility criteria under a subsidy programme should not be construed as prohibited LCRs under the SCM. However, the test devised by the AB to distinguish legitimate eligibility criteria from prohibited LCRs could facilitate circumvention of the LCRs prohibition under the SCM.