Suchergebnisse

The article covers the resumption of the active work of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees through the prism of US activity within this structure. Created on the initiative of American leader F. Roosevelt in 1938 to help refugees from Austria and Germany, IGCR in reality appeared dysfunctional with the outburst of the Second World War. The article examines factors that revitalized activities of the defined structure. It was emphasized that the organization's revival was made possible by appropriate initiatives originating from the British and American parties in early 1943. It was determined that strategic and tactical tasks were discussed and adopted on the basis of the results of an Inter-allied Bermuda Refugee Conference. Special mention was made to the work of American representatives of the American delegation headed by the Rector of Princeton University - Harold Dodds.The article reveals agenda of the resumed meetings of the Executive Committee of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, analysis its results. The main range of issues that the Directorate of the IGCR had to deal with: the renewal of the membership of twenty-nine countries and the further expansion of the organization through the invitation and involvement of twenty new member states, the co-optation of new representatives of the new member states into the governing and executive body of the organization, changing approaches to funding, and introduction of the principle of "binding decisions", preparation for the convening of a General congress.The questions, which were separately considered at the meetings of the Executive Committee - expansion of the territorial mandate of the IGCR, Soviet-Polish contradictions, the definition of the representative of the French delegation in connection with the struggle for leadership in the resistance of Russia, the creation of refugee camps in North Africa. It has been evaluated the influence on decision-making process of American representatives in the Executive Committee of the IGCR - Patrick Malin and John Winant.During the preparation of the article a potential source as the diplomatic correspondence of documents of the American foreign policy department are researched. Attention is drawn to the analysis of this matter in the investigations and research work of foreign historians. The article clarifies that the formation of a new system of international protection of refugees proclaimed F. Roosevelt in 1938 took place in complicated foreign policy circumstances. The change of the situation on the fronts, the emergence of public opinion and the new approaches of the British government allowed in the first half of 1943 to return to the development of instruments and mechanisms to conduct relief work and assistance to war refugees through the implementation of IGCR's projects.

After Bonn and Marrakech it is likely that emission trading will be realized in the near future. Major influences on the permit market are the institutional details, the participation structure and the treatment of hot air. Different scenarios do not only differ in their implications for the demand and supply of permits and thus the permit price, but also in their allocative effects. Most repercussions can be expected to stem from the effects on the world markets for fossil fuel and especially the oil market. For example the withdrawal of the USA from the Kyoto Protocol and the allocation mechanism for the hot air in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe influence the level of energy demand and gross and net energy prices which in turn change the production structure of energy intensive goods and influence welfare depending on whether a country is an energy net exporter or importer. In this paper we discuss different institutional designs for hot air trading combined with the US withdrawal and quantify the effects by using a computable general equilibrium model. Besides detailed results for the analyzed scenarios, two major findings are relevant for future studies on emission trading: First, marginal abatement cost curves are not as stable as presumed up to now. Second, we find that indeed the allocative repercussions of a scenario are to a large degree determined by its effects on world energy demand and world energy prices. Both findings imply that partial equilibrium models of permit trading that are based on marginal abatement curves ignore the important interaction between the permit market and the world energy markets.

AbstractThis article explores the US contribution to the illegal transatlantic slave trade to Brazil and the tensions generated by this hemispheric connection in the mid-nineteenth century. It combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, based on diplomatic records and Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, in order to assess the size and variety of forms of US participation in the traffic to Brazil. More generally, the article examines the tensions caused by the rise of abolitionism and the limits to the enforcement of anti-slave trade legislation in the free trade international environment that emerged after the Napoleonic Wars. By framing the attitudes of the US government within a broader Atlantic context, this work shows why certain forms of US participation in the contraband slave trade (such as providing US-built ships) became more predominant than others (such as directly financing and organising slave voyages) by the mid-nineteenth century.

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduce the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US, but also the spillover effects on technology and countries' relative bargaining power induced by the US decision. Therefore, it is crucial to analyse whether an incentive strategy exists that could induce the US to revise their decision and to comply with the Kyoto commitments. One solution, occasionally proposed in the literature and in actual policymaking, is to link negotiations on climate change control with decisions concerning international R&D cooperation. This paper explores this idea by analysing on the one hand the incentives for EU, Japan and Russia to adopt this strategy, and on the other hand the incentives for the US to join a coalition which cooperates both on climate change control and on technological innovation. The extended regime in which cooperation takes place on both dimensions (GHG emissions and R&D) will be examined from the view point of countries' profitability and free-riding incentives. Finally, after having assessed the effectiveness and credibility of the issue linkage strategy, we explore the economic and environmental benefits of a new, recently proposed regime, which aims at achieving GHG emission control by enhancing cooperation on technological innovation and diffusion (without targets on emissions).

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduces the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US, but also the spillover effects on technology and countries' relative bargaining power induced by the US decision. Therefore, it is crucial to analyse whether an incentive strategy exists that could induce the US to revise their decision and to comply with the Kyoto commitments. One solution, occasionally proposed in the literature and in actual policymaking, is to link negotiations on climate change control with decisions concerning international R&D cooperation. This paper explores this idea by analysing on the one hand the incentives for EU, Japan and Russia to adopt this strategy, and on the other hand the incentives for the US to join a coalition which cooperates both on climate change control and on technological innovation. The extended regime in which cooperation takes place on both dimensions (GHG emissions and R&D) will be examined from the view point of countries' profitability and free-riding incentives. Finally, after having assessed the effectiveness and credibility of the issue linkage strategy, we explore the economic and environmental benefits of a new, recently proposed regime, which aims at achieving GHG emission control by enhancing cooperation on technological innovation and diffusion (without targets on emissions).