Suchergebnisse

The article reviews international experience of the pension reform switching from PAYG pension system toward funded or mixed ones. Issues related to reception of new institutions and changes in institutional environment are considered, recommendations on correction of the Russian pension system are formulated. Global experience shows that funded pension systems were successfully introduced either by democratic political regimes based on consensus or by dictatorships using authoritarian methods. In the latter case, reform plans were corrected as implementation proceeded. Stability of the reformed pension system strongly depends on its transparency and protection mechanisms for employees and employers built within the system. Funded pension system brings higher formal employment but creates new administrative barriers and transaction costs, increasing stability but reducing flexibility of the social insurance system.

Current approaches for understanding and analyzing religion in international politics insufficiently incorporate the role of ethics in the practices of religious actors. Primordialist approaches essentialize religion, instrumental approaches consider it to be an epiphenomenon, and cosmopolitan approachesa prioridowngrade alternative ethical constructs as insufficiently universalist. An approach to religion that begins with a constitutive understanding of religious belief and economic, social, and political practice as outlined in Weber'sSociology of Religion, is more helpful. However, because Weber's method insufficiently addresses ethical intentionality, the 'neo-Weberian' approach I advance here incorporates the concepts of 'common good' and 'popular casuistry' into socio-historical contextualization. This approach provides a way to understand and theorize how religious adherents connect religious guidelines to moral action that avoids the essentialization of religion which is often characteristic of other perspectives.

Community forestry has transformed over the past 25 years from being an experimental means of providing wood-fuel for the rural poor to a community-led movement demanding reform of the forestry sector. International networks to promote community forestry, which emerged at very different moments in this history with different visions, goals, targets and participants, have played a key role in this transformation. Based on a review of seven countries and ten networks, the study compiles the main lessons learned from this experience in term of effectiveness, communications techniques, network governance, relations with donors and linkage to social movements. The increasing mobilisation of community-based organisations means that supportive NGOs and government agencies now need to play a different role to the one they gave themselves 25 years ago.

Condiciones sociales de la circulación internacional de las ideas.

Los textos circulan desprovistos de contexto. Los que se importan no llevan consigo el campo de producción del que son producto; por su lado, los receptores, al estar ellos mismos insertos en un campo de producción diferente, reinterpretan los textos en función de su propia position en el campo de reception. Una ciencia de las relaciones internationales en materia de cultura debería tomar como objeto de estudio la série de operaciones sociales que intervienen en cada caso, principalmente el proceso de selection (¿qué se publica?, ¿quién traduce?, ¿quién publica?) e identification (editorial, colección, prefacio, etc.). Tales análisis constituirán un instrumento indispensable para combatir los malentendidos de la importation y favorecer una verdadera internationalization de la vida intelectual.

Tim Harcourt is the J. W. Nevile Fellow in Economics at the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of six books, including the international bestseller The Airport Economist, and is a regular commentator on Australian television and radio and on Bloomberg, CCTV, BBC World, and CNBC Asia

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. By linking with the Internet, we don't mean absolute freedom of information. I think there is a general understanding about this. If you go through customs, you have to show your passport. It's the same with management of information. There is no contradiction at all between the development of telecommunications infrastructure and the exercise of state sovereignty. Will cyberspace exercise its own sovereignty? Does it do so already?