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432. Latin American Drugs II- Improving Policy and Reducing Harm
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- The policies of a decade or more to stop the flow of cocaine from the Andean source countries, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, to the two largest consumer markets, the U.S. and Europe, have proved insufficient and ineffective. Cocaine availability and demand have essentially remained stable in the U.S. and have been increasing in Europe. Use in Latin American transit countries, in particular Argentina, Brazil and Chile, is on the rise. Flawed counter-drug polices also are causing considerable collateral damage in Latin America, undermining support for democratic governments in some countries, distorting governance and social priorities in others, causing all too frequent human rights violations and fuelling armed and/or social conflicts in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. A comprehensive shared policy reassessment and a new consensus on the balance between approaches emphasising law enforcement and approaches emphasising alternative development and harm reduction are urgently required.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Cooperation, and War on Drugs
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Latin America, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia
433. Omens and Threats in the Doha Round: The Decline of Multilaterialism?
- Author:
- Daniel Drache and Marc D. Froese
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Faced with the lengthening shadow of the Doha Round of trade negotiations, scholars often point to the seven years it took negotiators to conclude the Uruguay Round. This paper argues that the negotiating deadlock in the Doha Round represents a transformative shift on the part of Member nations away from the current model of multi-platform, single-undertaking multilateralism and towards smaller negotiating platforms. We examine two dynamics that mark this round as qualitatively different from the Uruguay Round. First, new, highly vocal global trading powers such as India, China and Brazil have begun to use their market power to push for a trade deal that directly benefits the Global South. Second, the new rules for trade that were agreed to in the Uruguay Round had promised a reduction in non-tariff protectionism, but the continuing popularity of protectionist industrial policies has shown the developing world that greater access to northern markets might not be delivered at the World Trade Organization. The paper concludes with a discussion of trade multilateralism in historical context. This is not the first time the world has been faced with systemic changes in international economic relations. In the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, global trade broke down – first with the end of the British free trade system, and shortly thereafter with the catastrophic collapse of the interwar trading order. Nevertheless, this qualitative shift in the negotiating strategies of states need not be seen as a return to protectionism. The explosion of preferential regional agreements offers a number of new ways to address the social and political dimensions of economic integration.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Globalization, International Organization, International Trade and Finance, Post Colonialism, Sovereignty, Treaties and Agreements, and World Trade Organization
- Political Geography:
- China and Brazil
434. Emerging Middle Powers' Soft Balancing Strategy: State and Perspectives of the IBSA Dialogue Forum
- Author:
- Daniel Flemes
- Publication Date:
- 08-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- German Institute of Global and Area Studies
- Abstract:
- How can weaker states influence stronger ones? This article offers a case study of one recent exercise in coalition building among Southern middle powers, the 'India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum'. The analysis outlines five major points: first, it argues that the three emerging players can be defined as middle powers in order to frame their foreign policy behavior and options at the global level. Second, soft balancing is a suitable concept to explain IBSA's strategy in global institutions. Third, institutional foreign policy instruments are of pivotal significance in IBSA's soft balancing strategy. Fourth, the potential gains of IBSA's sector cooperation, particularly in trade, are limited due to a lack of complementarity of the three economies. And fifth, IBSA's perspectives and impact on the international system will depend on four variables: IBSA's ability to focus on distinct areas of cooperation, the consolidation of its common strategy of soft balancing, the institutionalization of IBSA, and its enlargement in order to obtain more weight in global bargains.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- Africa, India, Asia, South Africa, Brazil, and South America
435. From Patronage to Program: The Emergence of Party-Oriented Legislators in Brazil
- Author:
- Frances Hagopian, Carlos Gervasoni, and Juan Andres Moraes
- Publication Date:
- 12-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper explains the unanticipated emergence of party - oriented legislators and rising party discipline in Brazil since the early 1990s. We contend that deputies in Brazil have become increasingly party - oriented because the utilities of party - programmatic and patronage - based electoral strategies shifted with market reforms, which created a programmatic cleavage in Brazilian politics and diminished the resource base for state patronage. Based on an original survey of the Brazilian Congress, we introduce new measures of partisan campaigns, party polarization, and the values legislators attach to party program and voter loyalty. Regression analysis confirms that deputies who believe voters value party program run partisan, programmatic campaigns, and those in polarized parties and those who believe voters are loyal to the party are willing to delegate authority to party leaders and do not switch parties. Party polarization and the proximity of deputies' policy preferences to their party's mean explain discipline on 236 roll - call votes in the 51st legislature (1999 – 2001).
- Topic:
- Government and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
436. How Do the BRICs Stack Up? Adding Brazil, Russia, India, and China to the Environment Component of the Commitment to Development Index
- Author:
- David Roodman
- Publication Date:
- 10-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) ranks 21 of the world's richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the five billion people living in poorer nations. Moving beyond simple comparisons of foreign aid, the CDI ranks countries on seven themes: quantity and quality of foreign aid, openness to developing-country exports, policies that influence investment, migration policies, stewardship of the global environment, security policies and support for creation and dissemination of new technologies.
- Topic:
- Environment and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Europe, India, Asia, and Brazil
437. Bridging Boundaries: The Equalization Strategies of Stigmatized Ethno-racial Groups Compared
- Author:
- Michèle Lamont and Christopher Bail
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This article offers a framework for analyzing variations in how members of stigmatized ethnoracial groups establish equivalence with dominant groups through the comparative study of “equalization strategies.” Whereas extant scholarship on anti-racism has focused on the struggle of social movements against institutional and political exclusion and social justice, we are concerned with the “everyday” anti-racist strategies deployed by members of stigmatized groups. We seek to compare how these strategies vary according to the permeability of inter-group boundaries. The first section defines our research problem and the second section locates our agenda within the current literature. The third section sketches an empirical context for the comparative analysis of equalization strategies across four cases: Palestinian citizens of Israel, Catholics in Northern Ireland, blacks in Brazil, and Québécois in Canada. Whereas the first two cases are examples of ethnic conflict where group boundaries are tightly policed, the second cases exemplify more permeable boundaries. We conclude by offering tentative hypotheses about the relationship between the permeability of inter-group boundaries and the salience and range of equalization strategies used by members of stigmatized ethno-racial groups to establish equivalence with their counterparts in dominant majority groups.
- Topic:
- Civil Society
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, Canada, Israel, Brazil, South America, and North Ireland
438. No sympathy for Chavez: Venezuela's president in the media
- Publication Date:
- 06-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Media Tenor International
- Abstract:
- Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has difficulties in exporting his socialistic ideas to the region. The newspapers of seven Latin American countries have shown little sympathy towards his ideas in the past months, as has been shown by a new Media Tenor analysis of 21 leading newspapers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Columbia, Mexico and Peru (chart 1). Chavez's re-election generated positive headlines, but his leadership aspirations for the region as well as his announced renaissance of a new socialism of Latin American coinage (the “Bolivian Revolution”) were both met with skepticism. Some newspapers see Venezuela the brink of dictatorship, and the Mexican newspaper Reforma called Chavez a “tropical Mussolini”.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Mass Media, and Socialism/Marxism
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Latin America, Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia
439. The Politics of Patents and Drugs in Brazil and Mexico: The Industrial Bases of Health Activism
- Author:
- Ken Shadlen
- Publication Date:
- 12-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- This paper analyzes the politics of intellectual property (IP) and public health in Brazil and Mexico. Both countries introduced pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s, to comply with their international obligations. Indeed, both countries' IP systems were markedly similar in being favorable to the interests of the transnational, innovation-based pharmaceutical sector. Yet since the late 1990s the two countries have diverged in dramatic fashion. In Brazil the response to the high price of drugs and societal demands to reform the IP system has been to make obtaining private ownership over knowledge more difficult and to increase the rights of third parties to access and use knowledge. In Mexico, the response to similar demands has been to raise impediments to third parties' rights of access and use and effectively extend the periods of protection granted to patent-owners.
- Topic:
- Government, Health, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and Mexico
440. Latin America and the Catholic Church: Points of Convergence and Divergence (encontros e desencontros) 1960–2005
- Author:
- Luiz Alberto Gómez de Souza
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The author aims at uncovering points of convergence and divergence in the relationship between the Catholic Church and society. He begins by analyzing the challenges facing the Church in modern times, using the case of the United States and the traditional political relationship between Church and State in Latin America until the rise of the social-Christian options in the 1960s. He then describes Vatican II, which opened the Church to the influences of modern times. Subsequently, the author explains what he calls the “glorious period” of the Latin American Church, from the conference of bishops in Medellin (1968) to the meeting in Puebla (1979), with the Church's critique of “social sin,” its option for the poor, and liberation theology. Concurrently, the author shows the contradictory effects of the military regimes in the region. Looking at the relationship between Christians and politics, he analyzes in particular the case of Brazil, later expanding his analysis to Latin America and the world. The author then addresses social participation and politics in ecclesiastical practices and the slow building of democracy in the region, offering methodological criticisms of some static and nonhistorical analyses. He delineates how democracy has challenged the Church and, looking ahead, explores the present dynamism of society, especially the virtuosity of social movements and ecclesiastical communities when facing future transformation. The author ends by describing the current situation in Latin America, highlighting the pressing need for the Church to face issues that are presently frozen (such as sexuality, celibacy, and women as priests), in the hopes of a possible Council process in the future.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Government, and Religion
- Political Geography:
- United States, Brazil, South America, and Latin America