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Defence date: 22 October 1993 ; Supervisor: Antonio Cassese ; The final publication is available on http://link.springer.com

Characterizing Hong Kong's international status can be a hazardous endeavour.As a British colony and not a sovereign state, the territory has not been seen asan independent actor on the international stage. Attempts to identify theterritory's status have been further complicated by the 1984 Sino-British agreementto transfer Hong Kong's sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997. WhenHong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a 'highdegree of autonomy' under Chinese sovereignty after 1997, it will continue to bea non-sovereign territorial entity in international terms. Nonetheless, under the'one country; two systems' formula it has been granted extensive authority andpower in its internal governance, and the scope of autonomy in its externalrelations as agreed upon between the British and Chinese governments isextensive.

The development of larger technical systems relies on the coordination of autonomous action of a multitude of individuals and organizations. Institutional settings, often neglected in the analysis of technical development, help to achieve such coordination. Our analysis of international technical standardization in telecommunications highlights an institutionalized process aiming at the creation of compatibility standards as the means for coordination. Formal procedural, membership, and decision rules combined with informal sets of expectations constitute the normative basis of the CCITT, the most prominent international standardization organization in telecommunications. Although scientific, political and economic aspects can be equally important for standards, the CCITT selectively legitimizes a technical perspective. Political and scientific reasoning is restricted, an open economic perspective even completely banned, unless they can be translated into a technical perspective. This increases the capacity to proceed on a consensusal basis and often facilitates reaching a con-sensus in a controversy. Standardization of Videotex and Telefax empirically examplifies this, and at the same time demonstrates the limits of pure technical reasoning to resolve genuine political or economic conflicts. ; Die Entwicklung großer technischer Systeme hängt von der Koordination autonomer Handlungen einer Vielzahl von Individuen und Organisationen ab. Institutionelle Arrangements, oft vernachlässigt in Analysen technischer Entwicklung, erleichtern dies. Unsere Analyse internationaler technischer Standardisierung in der Telekommunikation behandelt den Prozeß der Vereinbarung von Kompatibilitätsstandards, die Koordination ermöglichen. Formale Mitgliedschafts-, Entscheidungs- und Verfahrensregeln sowie informelle Erwartungsmuster bilden die normative Grundlage der Arbeit des CCITT, der wichtigsten internationalen Standardisierungsorganisation in der Telekommunikation. Obwohl wissenschaftliche, politische und ökonomische Aspekte gleich wichtig sein können für Standards, begünstigt der CCITT selektiv eine technische Perspektive. Politische und wissenschaftliche Argumentation ist nur eingeschränkt zulässig, eine offensichtlich ökonomische Sichtweise sogar völlig unzulässig, es sei denn eine Übersetzung in eine technische Perspektive gelingt. Dies verbessert die Möglichkeit, auf Konsensbasis zu arbeiten, und erleichtert oft die Einigung in Kontroversen. Die Standardisierung von Bildschirmtext und Telefax liefert hierfür empirische Beispiele und zeigt gleichzeitig die Grenzen rein technischer Argumentation auf, um politische oder ökonomische Konflikte zu lösen.

International nature conservation programs were originally driven by field biologists. As environment has assumed increasing prominence on the international political agenda, the role of biologists has been marginalised. International programs now have ambitious targets set by politicians and aspire to save the world.There is a need to balance these global environmental initiatives with a set of shorter-term practical actions to maximise biodiversity conservation. Biological scientists can cooperate with other natural resource specialists and social scientists in defining more targeted cost-effective nature conservation programs. A case is made for the Prince Bernhard Chair at the University of UTRECHT to focus on this interface between science and conservation practices.

The consequences of free trade in an international spatial duopoly are investigated, under different market regimes. The optimal setting for both countries appears to be a private duopoly in which both firms operate under the same fiscal regime and a side payment from the larger to the smaller country occurs.

This paper discusses environmental policies which aim at a sustainable use of domestic resources which are mobile. It assumes that one country introduces such a policy but the other country does not. If a resource is mobile, strict domestic environmental policies may increase the resource imports from other countries. This paper shows that a unilateral environmental policy may even imply an increased resource use. In this case, a large part of the sustainability objective is met by substituting domestic resource extraction by imports. When sustainability is modelled in an inter temporal, competitive framework, the paper shows that the sustainability rule will not lead to a slower rate of extraction of the resource.

This paper addresses the question of whether trade interdependencies are significant in explaining the international synchronization of business cycles, or "international business cycles". Using an econometric framework that combines the concept of separate cointegration (Granger an Konishi, 1992) with that of common feature analysis (Engle and Kozicki, 1993; Vahid and Engle, 1993), we are able to formulate meaningful ways of characterizing the links between trade flow dynamics and international output dynamics. We conclude that trade interdependencies do have an effect in explaining the international business cycle.

Considering that a nation is definitionally a governmental entity, the issues critical to an international business gamingsimulation must be governmental issues, namely, monetary, fiscal, and trade policies. A gaming-simulation can represent issues either by modeling them or by gaming them. The gaming method assures validity and avoids administrative error. Its administrative difficulties can be relieved by computers. Forms for presenting national accounting statements and methods for computing currency exchange rates and national measures of welfare are discussed. A minimum class size limitation of 20 participants is acknowledged and one application is presented. Continued development of the gaming method may depend on the acceptance of gaming-simulations as ideal instruments for assessing business education.

This article analyzes public opinion data on environmental issues collected in two major surveys. The data reveal substantial concern about the environment in both developing and industrial countries along with perceptions that the quality of the environment has declined and will continue to decline. Developing country respondents rate local and national environmental quality lower than industrial country respondents, while both groups rate global environmental quality about the same. The data also reveal considerable willingness among the developing and industrial countries to accept responsibility for the world's environmental problems and recognition of the importance of governments in addressing local and national environmental issues and of strong international agencies in addressing transnational issues.

In this article, the effectiveness of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is discussed in relation to three criteria: stated goals, correspondence between scientific advice and political decisions, and relative improvement in relation to the status quo. Under these criteria, the IWC has a low score on effectiveness in its initial phase (1949 to mid-1960s), but increased effectiveness in the next stage (mid-1960s to late 1970s). However, in the most recent history of the IWC, effectiveness has again been decreasing. Two main perspectives have been used in trying to explain the development within the IWC; first and most important, the assumption is that effectiveness will vary according to differences in the type of problems and related state preferences; the more "malign" the problem, the lower the effectiveness. Also, it is assumed that, although to a lesser degree, effectiveness will be influenced by the problem-solving capacity related to the cooperation in question. This approach is based on the design outlined for a large comparative research project on the effectiveness of international resource and environmental management. In this article, however, this perspective is used in a very simplified form, primarily to systematize the history and performance of the IWC.Key words: effectiveness, International Whaling Commission, science, policy, international, resource, management, interests, power, institutions ; Dans cet article, on discute de l'efficacité de la Commission baleinière internationale (CBI) selon trois critères: les buts exprimés, l'accord entre les avis scientifiques et les décisions politiques, et l'amélioration relative par rapport au statu quo. Selon ces critères, la CBI affiche une faible efficacité dans sa phase initiale (1949 - milieu des années 60), mais augmente son efficacité dans la phase suivante (milieu des années 60 - fin des années 70). Dernièrement cependant, l'efficacité de la CBI est de nouveau en baisse. On utilise deux grands axes pour tenter d'expliquer cette évolution au sein de la CBI. On suppose d'abord et surtout que l'efficacité variera en fonction des types de problèmes et des préférences de chaque État à leur sujet; plus le problème sera «épineux», moins il y aura d'efficacité. On suppose aussi, bien qu'à un degré moindre, que l'efficacité sera influencée par la capacité de résolution de problèmes reliée à la coopération en question. Cette approche est fondée sur le plan d'un grand projet de recherche comparative sur l'efficacité de la gestion des ressources et de l'environnement au niveau international. Dans cet article, cette perspective n'est cependant utilisée que sous une forme très simplifiée, surtout dans le but de systématiser l'histoire et la performance de la CBI.Mots clés: efficacité, Commission baleinière internationale, science, politique, international, ressource, gestion, intérêts, puissance, institutions

It is by now a trite commonplace that we live in an increasingly integrated global economy, in which the barriers to the free movement of goods and capital, though not labor, are rapidly disappearing as a result of both policy reforms and the progress of technology in transport and communications. The rhetoric as well as the substance of national economic policy is now preoccupied with the problem of how each country can hope to survive and prosper in a world where capital controls and trade restrictions are off the agenda. Is the simple laissez-faire principle of simply doing nothing correct, or is there anything an activist government might usefully strive to accomplish? With the global pool of capital at any instant restlessly searching for the highest return, regardless of borders, a popular prescription has come to be the provision of public infrastructure and the training and education of the labor force. With these measures the nation can attempt to secure for itself a higher share of the global capital stock and thus ensure for itself higher wages and better quality jobs for its own labor force.

The protection of the global environment is impeded by multilateral externalities which the international community attempts to bring under control by entering into international agreements. International agreements, however, can suffer from non-compliance and free-riding behaviour by sovereign states and must therefore be enforced and stabilised internationally. This paper describes instruments for the enforcement and stabilisation of an international CO2 agreement and evaluates them in the light of economic and legal theory. Economic instruments build on repetition and use utility transfers, economic sanctions and flexible treaty adjustments. Important legal instruments are reciprocal obligations and cooperation duties, international funding and transfer rules, treaty suspension, retorsions and reprisals, treaty revision, and monitoring. The paper shows that economic and legal instruments are compatible to a considerable extent. It develops proposals for the enforcement and stabilisation of a global CO2 agreement and other multilateral treaties.

"October 1995." ; Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-70). ; Mode of access: Internet.

Subproject 9 of IKARUS investigates techniques and processes for verifying compliance by states party to the framework convention on climate change and its (future) protocols. They are obliged to limit their GHG emissions and take other climate protection measures and must make (regular) reports on the fulfilment of their obligations. In TP 9 verification is understood to be the independent monitoring of the completeness and correctness of these national reports (declarations) by a specially established organization, although only initial considerations are currently available concerning its form. With the inclusion of the international level, the consideration of all relevant anthropogenic emission sectors and the anticipation of future protocols (e. g. forest protection, agriculture), TP 9 goes beyond the national working field of IKARUS relative to GHG emissions from the energy sector, although it remains closely linked to the overall project since the greatest attention is paid in TP 9 to verifying the declarations via the energy-related GHG emissions. A verification of reports is also required within the framework of efforts by theIPCC and OECD to achieve a standardization of methods for the system of reporting on national GHG emissions (inventories) to be established worldwide. At least as yet the verification concepts of TP 9 and IPCC/DECD differ since they (implicitly) assume different state behaviour: IPCC/DECD concentrate on treaty violations by false or incomplete national declarations which express the states' capacity shortage. It is assumed that in spite of the states' willingness such deficiencies will hamper or delay proper balancing of their emissions. In this sense, verification intends to reveal weaknesses and assist willing but incompetent states to overcome these difficulties with help and advice. This approach is implementation-oriented and corrective. - Over and above this, TP 9 does not exclude the possibility that states or actors in the states deliberately (intentionally) falsify their ...

International environmental law is highly fragmented and national legislation differs widely. General principles for drafting environmental standards would facilitate harmonisation. The article examines the general principles that could be applied at international level.