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601. Combating illicit financial flows from poor countries. Estimating the possible gains

Author:
Jakob Vestergaard and Martin Højland
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
If the UN Millennium Development Goals are to be reached by 2015, development aid needs to be tripled – which is most unlikely. Instead, countries should unite in a concerted multilateral effort to combat illicit financial flows: for every dollar poor countries receive in development assistance, more than eight dollars are illegally transferred back to rich countries, most of it in order avoid local taxation. Effectively combating these illicit financial flows would generate more financial resources for development than foreign aid is likely to ever do – and help build a sustainable tax base in developing countries for the benefit of future development efforts.
Topic:
Corruption, Crime, and Economics
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Europe, London, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, and Luxembourg

602. The Blueprint: A History of Dubai's Spatial Development Through Oil Discovery

Author:
Stephen J. Ramos
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
To understand Dubai's modern history since its founding in 1833, one must go further back in time to explore the regional history that frames its foundation. European powers, beginning with the Venetians, and, then subsequently, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally the British, were interested in the Gulf region as a means to secure trade routes to and from the Indian Subcontinent and points eastward. This meant that from the fifteenth century through the late nineteenth century, if trade routes could move uninterrupted through the Gulf region, European powers were not involved in the societal affairs of settlements as a traditionally colonial ruling class, nor did European merchants bother to extensively explore trade within the region, believing that it required more effort than either the climate or the local economies were worth. The region's local tribes were divided among the maritime coastal groups and those that were nomadic and land-bound, and conflict among these groups occurred in parallel with the larger European conflicts also playing out in the region. The intersection of the two came with the increase in piracy, which, in very basic terms, represented a kind of cultural disagreement on trade customs. The Europeans felt that they were unjustly looted and local groups simply sought to protect themselves from foreign incursion while taking what they believed was their share. Historians still debate this issue today, but in relation to Dubai, the piracy of the times serves as an example of how looser understandings of the licit and illicit, particularly in terms of trade, could be capitalized upon as business venture. The smuggling of gold, weapons, and other goods throughout Dubai's history may have been seen as illicit from perspectives outside Dubai's ports, but the merchant-friendly environments of these ports and the adherence to local autonomy allowed them to trade freely.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Oil
Political Geography:
Europe, India, Arabia, and Dubai

603. Getting Women into Local Strategic Partnerships: Knowing your community, improving public services

Author:
Sue Smith, Antonia Bance, and Louie Fooks
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This paper, based on two pilot projects conducted by Oxfam with LSPs in Sunderland and Thurrock in 2008-9, looks at how local authorities can increase the representation and participation of women in LSPs, and how needs differ by gender. The evidence from the pilot projects clearly shows that LSPs can, and must, take concrete steps to involve women more effectively in local decision-making – and take their particular needs into consideration in setting targets for services such as transport, unemployment, and housing – in or der to improve their economic and social well-being and tackle the poverty and social exclusion they face. The paper makes a series of recommendations to those involved in LSPs as to how to do this, and gives examples of good practice.
Topic:
Economics and Gender Issues
Political Geography:
Europe

604. The Double Asymmetry of European Integration Or: Why the EU Cannot Be a Social Market Economy

Author:
Fritz W. Scharpf
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Judge-made law has played a crucial role in the process of European integration. In the vertical dimension, it has greatly reduced the range of autonomous policy choices in the member states, and it has helped to expand the reach of European competences. At the same time, however, “Integration through Law” does have a liberalizing and deregulatory impact on the socioeconomic regimes of EU member states. This effect is generally compatible with the status quo in liberal market economies, but it tends to undermine the institutions and policy legacies of Continental and Scandinavian social market economies. Given the high consensus requirements of European legislation, this structural asymmetry cannot be corrected through political action at the European level.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

605. Turkey's Transformers

Author:
Morton I. Abramowitz and Henri J. Barkey
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Turkey hopes to be a global power, but it has not yet become even the regional player that the ruling AKP declares it to be. Can the AKP do better, or will it be held back by its Islamist past and the conservative inclinations of its core constituents?
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey

606. Why the European Union Needs a 'Broader Middle East' Policy

Author:
Edward Burke, Ana Echagüe, and Richard Youngs
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
European foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a highly fragmented construction. Since the mid-1990s the EU's policies with Maghreb and Mashreq countries have been pursued under the rubric of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and now the Mediterranean Union. This plethora of highly institutionalised initiatives has been developed with negligible linkage to policy in the rest of the Middle East. Relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council remain low key and strikingly disconnected from the EMP. Contrary to its rhetorical emphasis on supporting regional integration around the world, the EU has failed to build its strategy towards Iran and Iraq into a regional security framework. Even more reproachable, given its credibility and influence in the economic sphere has been the EU's inability to foster regional economic integration between the Mediterranean and the Gulf.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Arabia, and North Africa

607. The value of power, the power of values: a call for an EU Grand Strategy

Author:
Sven Biscop (ed.)
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
In its 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS), the EU has a grand strategy, embracing all instruments and resources at the disposal of the Union and the Member States, but a partial one. The ESS tells us how to do things – in a preventive, holistic and multilateral way – but it is much vaguer on what to do: what are the concrete objectives and priorities of the EU as a global actor?
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

608. "The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror" by Manfred B. Steger

Author:
Carole K. Fink
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Faced with the political, economic, and social challenges of a globalized planet, are we bereft of any coherent political guideposts or do we still possess realistic and robust idea-systems? Steger, a prolific scholar of globalization, adopts a cautiously optimistic version of the second position.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

609. China-Southeast Asia Relations

Author:
Robert Sutter
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Comparative Connections
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Asian commentators who asserted that China and its neighbors could ride out the economic crisis in U.S. and Western financial markets appeared in retreat during the quarter as the impact of the financial turmoil and recession in America and Europe began to have a major effect on China and the region's trade, manufacturing, currency values, and broader economic stability. The hope that China could sustain stable growth independent of the U.S. and Europe and thereby provide an engine of growth for export-oriented Southeast Asian countries was dented by Chinese trade figures that nosedived in November, especially Chinese imports, which fell by 18 percent. The financial crisis also dominated the discussion at the ASEM summit in October. Meanwhile, China continued to pursue infrastructure development projects with its neighbors to the south, resolved the land boundary dispute with Vietnam, and signed a free trade agreement with Singapore. Talk of a planned Chinese aircraft carrier caused some controversy, but on the whole assessments of China's rise were notably more balanced than in the past.
Topic:
Economics, Financial Crisis, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States, China, America, Europe, Asia, and Southeast Asia

610. The multiple paradoxes of the agriculture issue in Central Asia

Author:
Sébastien Peyrouse
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Agriculture constitutes one of the main sectors in the economies of Central Asia: cotton production and export, mainly in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and to a lesser extent in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan; a booming grain sector in Kazakhstan; and a long tradition of vegetable cultivation throughout the region. The agrarian question is a sensitive one since the population is still predominantly rural in four of the five republics (all except Kazakhstan) and because food safety is not ensured in the two poorest states (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). Land reform would be a priority for the growth of investment, increased productivity, and, consequently, the reduction of rural unemployment and poverty. However, pressed by the choice of cotton versus self-sufficiency in food production, the Central Asian states remain hesitant. They must also manage many structural problems, including high levels of corruption in the agrarian administrative organs, the opacity of decisionmaking structures for the export of production, quasi-slavery in some impoverished rural areas, child labour, and serious environmental problems related to the overuse of the soil.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Europe, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan