Developing Countries and Environmental Protection: The Effects of Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Contracting

In the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, developing countries (DCs) were adamant that in order to protect the environment for the future, new institutions were needed that would channel resources from the wealthy developed countries to the poor DCs. With this backdrop, I analyze the problem faced by an asymmetrically informed supranational governmental authority (SNGA) that wishes to design an International Environmental Agreement (IEA). The SNGA cannot contract directly with polluting firms in the various DCs; instead, the SNGA must deal with such firms through their governments. I study this tripartite hierarchical interaction and focus on the properties of the optimal ex ante and ex post IEAs, which can be implemented by the SNGA in two different scenarios. The analysis suggests that IEAs are not inherently doomed due to a basic monitoring and enforcement problem stemming from national sovereignty. Further, desirable levels of pollution abatement can result in a number of contractual settings.     

Islamism revisited

While contemporary Islamism is a response to the domestic political situation in many Muslim countries, as well as to US and western policies in the Muslim world, it is also about religious assertion and the forging of an alternative ideology, not only as a means of empowerment but also as a means of establishing a particular social order. The debate is as much an internal one as it is a global one and in many ways mirrors the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for political and cultural independence.     

Planning theory revisited*

After brief personal recollections of the origins of planning theory, the author poses the question of why, after five decades of active theorizing, it is still impossible for people engaged in writing planning theory to agree on a formal definition of their subject. Four possible answers are explored: the problem of defining planning as an object to be theorized; the impossibility of talking about planning disconnected from actual institutional and political contexts; the several modes of doing planning theory and the dilemma of choosing among them; and the difficulty of incorporating power relations into planning discourse. The paper concludes with a brief comment on three themes that should be made central to theorizing; the production of the urban habitat, the rise of civil society, and the question of power.     

An urban slum revisited

William Foote Whyte. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943.xii + 284 pp. $5.00.     

Napoleon and Europe revisited

This article outlines the main themes of my book Napoleon's Integration of Europe (1991). Napoleonic France and Europe constituted an inseparable whole, through the ambitions of the French political class to impose an administrative prism of rational, modernising reforms on what were perceived as less developed societies. Such a study implied a dual dimension: the ideals and practices of the Imperial administration, and their impact on the subject populations. Criticisms of the book are grouped into four categories which are addressed in turn: the importance attached to Napoleon's personality and role; the implications, for analysis and interpretation, of the choice of archival sources-prefectoral and civil administration rather than police or judicial records; the influence of the Napoleonic model of administration beyond France, particularly in Germany; the possibility of treating the Grand Empire with its dependent states as a single phenomenon. Finally, it is worth noting that in the decade since publication of the book the deeper legacies of the Napoleonic model have barely attracted the attention of historians.     

The Kapthurin Formation revisited

This contribution reports on the results obtained from the 1980–7 research in the Kapthurin Formation (Baringo, Kenya) which aimed at the refinement of the chronology, stratigraphy and environmental evidence in order to establish a framework for the interpretation of the prehistoric sites. In 1966 a Late Acheulean industry with prepared-core technique and blade component, dated betweenca 0.82/0.64 myr and 0.23 myr had been described in the area concerned. All the sites belong to the middle Kapthurin formation which is situated in the Bruhnes normal polarity chron and has a lower limit of 0.58 myr. The upper limit of 0.23 myr could not be confirmed. The fauna is consistent with the available dating evidence. The sites are situated in a flat savanna landscape which was built up by a braided river system under slightly more humid conditions than the present climate. On some of the sites artifacts were found in association with palaeosoils. Although the interpretation of such assemblages must consider the impact of natural turbation processes, the palaeosoils provide exceptional conditions for comparing sites from the same phase of landscape stabilization. The present archaeological evidence suggests a sequence of Late Acheulean and Post-Acheulean (Sangoan?, Middle Stone Age) assemblages rather than the presence of one single industry as described previously. The relation between these assemblages and the two mandibles ofHomo sp. (aff.erectus) BK67 and BK8518 (found in 1966 and 1982) emphasizes the need for more research in the area.