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Rezension von:Daniel Béland / Klaus Petersen (Hg.) (2015): Analysing Social Policy Concepts and Language. Comparative and Transnational Perspectives. Bristol / Chicago: Policy Press. 272 S., ISBN 978-1-4473-0643-6, USD 42.95.

In Nigeria, despite the scarcity of tractors, average horsepower and prices of tractors appear high. These patterns are different from the experiences in other parts of the world where initially tractor horsepower was often smaller, such as Asia, or farmers were better endowed with land and wealth, such as Latin America. In Nigeria, joint ownership of tractors is rare, and formal loans are often unavailable due to high transactions costs. IFPRI's survey in Kaduna and Nasarawa states in 2013 suggested that the spatial mobility of tractors is generally low and the use of tractors is highly seasonal. There do not seem to be plausible explanations for the seeming dominance of large tractor use based on available information on prices and soils. Nevertheless, these patterns seem driven by the own initiative of the private sector rather than by government policies. Indivisibility of large tractors and limited mobility of supplies may cause imperfections in the custom tractor hiring market. In order to distinguish the impacts of technology adoption at the extensive margin from those at the intensive margin, in the empirical analyses for the research presented here we tested these hypotheses focusing on the differences among marginal adopters of tractor hiring services and non-adopters with similar characteristics. The results are three-fold: (1) adoptions patterns of tractor services are partly explained by basic factor endowments, suggesting that the market for custom hiring is in some way functioning efficiently in response to economic conditions; (2) adoptions are, however, affected by supply-side factors, including the presence of large farm households (and thus potential tractor owners) within the district, and (3) per capita household expenditure level differs significantly between the marginal adopters and non-adopters with similar characteristics. This difference seems to arise from adoption per se, rather than the intensity of adoption, which is consistent with the hypothesis of imperfection in the custom tractor hiring market. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; NSSP ; DSGD; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Political and legal history as well as geopolitical phenomenology of such thing as multilateral collective guarantees are studied. The contradictory nature of their political declarations and the impact of their existence on the reproduction of the rules of domination in world politics as well as on the maintenance of world order is analyzed. The existing state of multilateral security guarantees for Ukraine on the basis of the Budapest Memorandum after the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbass territories is examined. The ways to reduce the negative effects of quasi-juridical status of the Budapest Memorandum for Ukraine is outlined.

Since signing the Montreal Protocol in 1991, China has complied with the Protocol's procedural requirements and has satisfied its substantive obligations for reducing ozone-depleting substances by meeting the 1999 freeze targets and making progress towards reaching the 50 percent reduction goals for 2005. The Protocol's Multilateral Fund has played a key role in China's compliance. The sector-based approach to funding, which approved sector-level funding and targets for reduction of ozone-depleting substances, has been much more effective in changing government and industry behavior than the previous project-by-project approach, which required an application and approval procedure for each individual project. Other factors contributing to China's success include the use of market-based policies and regulations, positive government leadership and capacity building, and the participation of local environmental protection bureaus in implementing the Protocol.