Suchergebnisse

The international community has placed great hope and invested considerable time in exploring a global forest convention through the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development's Intergovernmental Forum on Forests and the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests process under the Commission on Sustainable Development. Multinational corporations control almost 40% of the world market in forest products, constituting a major stakeholder in global forest policy. The few cases of direct intervention by multinational corporations at international fora suggest their interests are expressed elsewhere. The authors identify and discuss three types of intervention in the existing forest regime: avoidance, enforcement-driven compliance, and performance-driven compliance. The regime has not achieved performance-driven compliance from multinational corporations because the regime itself is weak and has little support from states internationally and domestically. The authors suggest that multinational corporations have been so effective at avoiding or conditioning compliance that incentives for complying fully with the regime are nil.

AbstractWhen member states of the European Union face serious international threats, does this serve as a catalyst or obstacle for European integration in the security and defence domain? To gain purchase on this question, this paper examines public opinion from a common instrument fielded in 24 EU member states (and the United Kingdom) with a total sample size of more than 40,000 respondents. We argue that theoretical accounts of perceived threat produce rival hypotheses. Threats might have either uniform or differential effects on different groups of citizens and could lead to either convergence or divergence of public opinion. We show that perceptions of foreign threats are associated with more favourable views on integration in the security and defence domain. Importantly, this association is as strong among Eurosceptics as among Europhiles. The findings presented here are consistent with the view that functional pressures may temporarily convince Eurosceptics to accept integration in the foreign and security domain.

The increasing importance of cross-national research has resulted in an astonishing growth in the usage of international data over recent years. ESDS International provides academics across the UK with access to the major international databanks produced by international governmental agencies such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In this paper we describe how an emerging new user community for these databanks has been developed and supported, and the challenges of responding to a diverse and expanding user group. We report some of the problems users face accessing and using the data in their teaching and research and how these barriers can be overcome. Finally, we examine how the rapid growth in usage in the UK is reflected in current global trends and the potential demand for access to these databanks worldwide.

AbstractThe growing number of public policy measures challenged through investor‐state dispute settlement has raised critiques that international investment agreements could lead governments to avoid introducing new policy measures out of a fear that these could be challenged by foreign investors, often referred to as 'regulatory chill'. While the body of work on regulatory chill is still in its infancy, there is a need to interrogate extant studies to better understand the state of the knowledge and the methodological approaches being employed to produce an evidence base. Grounded in a critical review of the existing literature, this paper develops a conceptual framework of regulatory chill, identifying it as one possible policy response wherein investment agreements are internalised by policy makers as considerations during their policy decision‐making. Three distinct bodies of work were identified in the literature which helped to populate this framework, including analysis of investment treaty language and awards, interviews with policy makers to explore internalisation of such treaties, and case studies of suspected regulatory chill policy responses. The conceptual framework is intended to help drive forward a cohesive research agenda on regulatory chill that can underpin the ongoing investment treaty reform.

This OECD publication provides statistics on international trade in services by partner country for33 OECD countries plus the European Union (EU27), the Euro area (EA16), and Hong Kong, China as well as links to definitions and methodological notes. The data concern trade between residents and non-residents of countries and are reported within the framework of the Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services.This book includes summary tables of trade patterns listing the main trading partners for each country and by broad service category. Series are shown in US dollars and cover the period 2006-2010.The data in this publication are also available on line viawww.oecd-ilibrary.orgunder the title OECD Statistics on International Trade in Services(http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/tis-data-en).

The liberal security order in the Indo-Pacific led by the US has been transitioning to one managed by a US-led security network. As a result, the geostrategic competition between the US and China has also been transforming to one between this US-led network and China. In the process, Japan, Australia, and India have emerged as major 'nodes' of the network. In this context, this paper adopts the concept of 'network power' to claim that South Korea—while it still favors being a part of the network—is concerned that it would be relegated to the status of a small peripheral node mainly 'tied' to Japan, the regional hub of the network in Northeast Asia. To mitigate this concern, South Korea attempts to avoid unnecessarily seeming to exclude China while still favoring the network; aligns with other regional nodes in the network, whether Australia, India, or some ASEAN states; and increasingly frames its role as that of an active 'order-shaper' rather than a passive 'order-taker'. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

The ICRC had been concerned by the situation in Kenya since 1952, but the British Red Cross & the British authorities did not allow the Committee to play its traditional role in an area where it had no automatic right to intervene. The British Red Cross actually did what it could to prevent the intervention of the Committee in a field it considered as its own, & where it did not tolerate competitors in the humanitarian field. The initial aim of the ICRC to visit Mau-Mau detainees was finally achieved, once in 1957 & once in 1959. Nevertheless, the ICRC had a major moral responsibility for the kind of argument that it developed against an intervention in Kenya, in contradiction with the universality principle of the Red Cross. Adapted from the source document.