Political Economics

In legal decisions standpoints can be supported by formal and also by substantive interpretative arguments. Formal arguments consist of reasons the weight or force of which is essentially dependent on the authoritativeness that the reasons may also have: In this connection one may think of linguistic and systemic arguments. On the other hand, substantive arguments are not backed up by authority, but consist of a direct invocation of moral, political, economic, or other social considerations. Formal arguments can be analyzed as exclusionary reasons: The authoritative character excludes—in principle—substantial counterarguments. Formal arguments are sometimes used to conceal value judgements based on substantial arguments. This paper deals with reconstructing problems regarding this strategic use of formal arguments in legal decisions, with a focus on linguistic argumentation.

Using framing as a theoretical and methodological framework, this study presents an analysis of the interpretation that the sub-Saharan African press put upon events prior to the 2003 American-led military invasion of Iraq. It was found that the press opposed policies and efforts intended to initiate military action. This opposition was based on the contention that a westernled attack on Iraq, without an international consensus, would produce great political, economic and social upheaval in the Middle East, which might destabilize and have a negative impact upon African states.

The objective of our paper is to contribute to the accounting education literature by demonstrating that there are significant differences among final year undergraduate accounting students in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Malaysia with respect to an important concept in auditing, namely, perceptions of external auditors’ independence. To attain this objective, we make an original contribution to accounting cross-cultural studies by operationalizing culture in terms ofindependent and interdependent construals of selfhood. These fundamental core cultural differences are important because they play a major role in regulating psychological processes including perceptions. Additionally, to gain insight into the evolving complexities associated with understanding culture in a global economy, the concept of acculturation is invoked in hypothesis formulation. We find support for the hypothesis that students from countries with greater political, economic and socio–cultural inte...

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Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) comprises the countries in Africa that do not have a Mediterranean coastline. This region is home to over 600 million people, most of whom are women and children/young adults who live in the rural areas. Most SSA countries are 'poor' and have low average life expectancy. The subcontinent has a low density health workforce and they are required to provide their services mostly under difficult circumstances. Not surprisingly they are the most likely to migrate to greener pastures. Healthcare provision in general is therefore a challenge in this region and urology is no exception. This article explores some of the more significant challenges facing urological practice and training in SSA. These include those challenges to healthcare practice in general (political instability, poverty, poor healthcare and family planning policies and HIV/AIDS) and those to urology specifically (limited number of trained urologists, limited training capacity, limited availability of modern equipment and drugs, nonrecognition of men's health as a subspecialty). Brief suggestions to overcome these problems are made and the need for a wholesome review of the political, economic and healthcare policies is emphasised.

Political empowerment of women starts with understanding the political and economic context in which they operate, as well as rigorous gender analysis, and it requires a comprehensive approach to programming that looks beyond the legislature. The aim of women political empowerment is more than just having women in elective or appointive positions, or attaining at least 30% presence of women in the national legislative – these are but a part of it; the ultimate goal of women political empowerment is focused on women’s effort to make their voices heard (USAID, Women in Power Project Summary Report). This thesis was conducted to examine the various practices implemented by International Organizations to empower women in political participation. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected for the study carried out in this thesis and content analysis was employed.

The City at Stake:“Stakeholder Mapping” The City By Sophie Esmann Andersen and Anne Ellerup Nielsen Abstract Studies of the city have been addressed from many different approaches such as law, political science, art history and public administration, in which the eco-nomic, ...

AbstractÐThis article examines the economics of abortion safety in Egypt. Under Egyptian law induced abortion is restricted to cases in which two physicians certify that the pregnancy presents a danger to the health or life of the mother. Despite this legal restriction, the available data indicate that abortion is quite widely practiced. Multifaceted strands of legal, religious, economic, and health care policy in¯uence both discourse about and access to abortion in Egypt. Interviews with 18 Egyptian women who sought to terminate their pregnancies revealed a wide range of abortion methods that varied in both safety and cost. Three levels of safety were identi®ed: (1) indigenous (wasfa baladi) methods were potentially the least safe; (2) biomedical abortions at clandestine clinics appeared safer than indigenous methods, but were not without risk; and (3) biomedical abortions administered by private gynecologists, were the most safe. Safety is expensive. Wealthy women can literally buy safety, while poor women's lack of ®nancial resources put their lives at great risk. #

this substance by the automobile industry, the broader question became: What was the level of acceptable risk that society should be willing to assume for industrial progress? By examining this controversy, we will illustrate how, at every stage of the debate, the political, economic, and scientific issues were inextricably intertwined.

Poverty reduction strategy papers represent both a primary policy device of international development institutions, and an instance of a wider international convergence of public policy around global integration and social inclusion. Charting the emergence of these approaches, this paper argues that this convergence has a number of structural predilections which favor the technical and juridical over the political economic, and a disciplinary framework over a practical contest. Drawing extensively on decentralized governance and poverty reduction programs in Uganda, this paper shows how these predilections obscure power relations and restrict practical and political options, while exacting heavy establishment and compliance costs.

This paper explores Malay songket motifs in relation to Malaysia’s cultural identity. An examination of government National Culture policy on fixed identity is contrasted with dynamic reality. The policy was imposed on a multi-racial population based on the concept of ‘Malay’ with no recognition of others. Divisions amongst the populace were created by Malay specific privileges. Failure to address others becomes the main interest of this research. Songket motifs are used to demonstrate the Malay’s link with traditional customs. The motifs symbolize Malay dominance in clinging on to power, echoing Malay history. Evidence of the motifs’ assimilation with Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic influences proved that there is no Malay ‘purity.’ The researcher’s practice transforms flat images of motifs into artworks. Practice differs from the norm of Malaysian artists, who translate Malay culture into art. A Malaysian artist having worked in the UK and USA, the researcher puts theory into practice....

Conventionally, power plants have been large, centralized units. A new trend is developing toward distributed energy generation, which means that energy conversion units are situated close to energy consumers, and large units are substituted by smaller ones. A distributed energy system is an efficient, reliable and environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional energy system. In this article, we will first discuss the definitions of a distributed energy system. Then we will evaluate political, economic, social, and technological dimensions associated with regional energy systems on the basis of the degree of decentralization. Finally, we will deal with the characteristics of a distributed energy system in the context of sustainability. This article concludes that a distributed energy system is a good option with respect to sustainable development. q

The tuna industry in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) is one of the largest and most valuable fisheries in the world. Since the 1980s, Pacific island countries have used licensing agreements with foreign fishing interests-known as access agreements-to earn tuna-related revenue and control the environmental impacts of fishing, with only minimal success. To date, there has been little work detailing the structure of access agreements and assessing how this structure relates to economic and environmental outcomes in the sector. This article helps to fill this gap by providing an overview of various access structures and a detailed empirical assessment of how these structures are applied in access agreements between Pacific island countries and the major foreign fishing interests active in the WCPO. This analysis is placed in the context of evolving regional fisheries management structures. The study reveals that while there is no uniform formula for access agreements, each structure is subject to distinct political, economic and environmental considerations that influence outcomes for Pacific island countries. As Pacific island countries develop the mechanism to allocate fishing rights under the new Vessel Day Scheme, drawing on their long history with access agreements will assist efforts to use access to achieve policy objectives. Improved transparency will enable Pacific island countries to identify successes and problems and adapt the Vessel Day Scheme allocation mechanisms accordingly.

Recent changes in fisheries regulation in the U.S. North Pacific reveal how neoliberalism is constituted in practice, and the forms that neoliberalism takes when it engages with environmental management and ecological processes. Whereas neoliberalism can be taken as a political economic philosophy that posits that markets, without state involvement, can best allocate resources, the history and practice of neoliberalism show that it is not as unified as it often appears. Analysis of contemporary fisheries policy reveals not only contradictions in neoliberal approaches, but also how those contradictions are shaped by the environmental context of the industry. This article discusses the rationale for neoliberalism in fisheries and the governance changes enacted in the 1998 American Fisheries Act, which privatized the fishery for Alaska pollock by closing the fishery to all new entrants, providing a set percentage of the yearly catch to ''cooperatives'' of participants, and allowing individuals to lease their shares. Karl Polanyi's notion of the ''double movement'' provides a framework to argue that even though regulators tout these reforms because they rely on market mechanisms to resolve recalcitrant ecological and economic problems in these fisheries, writing and implementing the act simultaneously involved complex rule making designed to protect the market. This form of neoliberalism results from the history of fisheries regulation, including recent emphasis on cooperative management, and the ecological characteristics of marine fish. Moves to privatize the oceans entail developing distinctive forms of neoliberal practice that uniquely combine private industry and government regulation. Because fish are one of the last great resource commons, neoliberal approaches to fisheries mark a profound geographical transformation in the political economy of the oceans.

Land change science has demonstrated that rural livelihoods around the world both drive and reflect changing environmental regimes and political economic/structural transformations. This article explores the relationship between increasingly globalized rural livelihoods and in-place land change, assessing results from social surveys of smallholding households in the southern Yucatán region. We examine evidence for a transition in agricultural livelihood strategies as smallholders adjust to changing political economic and institutional conditions, and link these transitioning strategies to land use changes. Based on household surveys in 1997 and 2003, we comparatively assess both changes in the selection of livelihood strategies and in the land use and cover impacts of those strategies. Our results indicate that although impacts of given strategies have changed little over this period, there are increasing proportions of households pursuing two divergent adjustment paths—one of agricultural withdrawal and one of agricultural intensification and commercialization. We investigate what sociodemographic characteristics differentiate the groups of households following distinct livelihood strategies. Our findings point to the possibility of simultaneous and contradictory land change outcomes as smallholders adjust in different ways to their intensified incorporation into global economies.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to test a model of cooperation between internationalising businesses and local and host country governments in the context of Australian companies internationalising to China. Design/methodology/approach -The paper presents a model for the political dimensions of internationalising based on corporate political theory and the cooperative view of management. Data were collected from personal interviews with representatives from 40 Australian organisations with businesses or operations in China. The data were analysed using NVivo. Findings -Assistance provided by the Australian government was often sought and was perceived to be beneficial. Most participants experienced policies and regulations which affected their entry modes. In ten cases they acted as barriers and significantly influenced entry mode choice. The majority of participants viewed the development of relationships with the Chinese government as important and employed a variety of relationship behaviours. Over half of the participants identified the need to understand and deal with the psychically distant government structures of the Chinese government, namely government intervention in business.

b Società per l'assistenza al malato oncologico terminal, Italia c Departamento de Enfermería y Fisioterapia, Universidad de les Illes Balears, España Recibido el 9 de octubre de 2007, aceptado el 9 de enero de 2008 PALABRAS CLAVE Promoción de la salud; Redes comunitarias; Entorno social

In Morocco the crisis narrative of desertification has been invoked for decades to facilitate and justify policy and legal changes that have systematically disadvantaged pastoralists and damaged the environment. The existing data from southern Morocco, however, do not support the claims of widespread desertification due to overgrazing or other pastoral activities. Furthermore, many anti-desertification and range improvement projects in southern Morocco have not succeeded. In an effort to rethink desertification and range ecology in Morocco, this paper presents an overview of the indigenous knowledge of range ecology among the Aarib, a group of camel pastoralists in southern Morocco, and compares it to the ''expert'' knowledge of Moroccan range managers. It suggests that this expert knowledge is based on questionable evidence and that it has been privileged over local knowledge primarily for political, economic and administrative reasons. The discrepancies between expert and indigenous knowledges of range ecology presented here underscore the need to reconsider range ecology in Morocco, taking indigenous ecological knowledge into account. Doing so may point the way to more successful development and conservation projects which are more environmentally appropriate and socially just. Not doing so will likely exacerbate environmental degradation in the region.

Over 24 million plastic bags are consumed in Kenya monthly. More than half of the bags end up in the solid waste stream. Plastic bags now constitute the biggest challenge to solid waste management in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and home to three million people. As a result, plastic bag waste has attracted great political and public attention, especially because the waste has myriad unique environmental problems. This paper seeks to unravel the problem of plastic bag waste in Nairobi through an urban political ecological perspective. Urban political ecology has done much to excavate economic, political, and cultural processes, as well as ecological dynamics that create and re-create urban environments. Little has been done in this context with respect to urban solid waste problems, with the exception of urban political ecology of environmental justice. However, research done within the context of urban political ecology of environmental justice has mainly focused on solid waste problems in the Western World, particularly USA. Drawing on research conducted in Nairobi, as well literature on business and politics, and solid waste management in Kenya, this paper examines the nature of plastic bag waste problem, its political-economic roots and implications for environmental justice.

Social and Technological macro environmental forces on Pizza fast food industry in Rawalpindi / Islamabad and suggestions for improvement in their performance. This research work is based on co-relational (survey) research design and instrument used for research is interview. PEST analysis was selected to analyze PEST forces in fast food industry. The paper provides empirical data to identify those factors that play key role in improvement of performance. In this study we found that the four factors P, E, S, and T are the key factors that can determine the performance of the fast food industry. Our result showed that the P is somewhat insignificant but other all three factors are the key factors which show the significant results. Hence we can say that managers have to keep these factors in mind to perform better.

The evaluation of transport projects has become increasingly complex. Different aspects have to be taken into account and the consequences of the problems are usually far reaching and the different policy alternatives are numerous and difficult to predict. Several pressure or action groups have also emerged causing an even more complex decision making process. The use of multi criteria analysis for the evaluation of transport projects has increased due to this increasing complexity of the problem situation. At the same time, the importance of stakeholders within this evaluation process should have been recognized. Researches on transport projects are generally carried out to provide information to policymakers that have to operate within restrictive parameters (political, economical, social, etc…). Researchers should therefore take greater account of the different priorities of stakeholders such as policymakers, private enterprises and households. These stakeholders should be inco...

We have provided a framework for identifying least-cost sites for afforestation and reforestation and deriving carbon sequestration cost curves at a global level in a scenario of limited information. Special attention is given to country risk in developing countries and the sensitivity to spatial datasets. Our model results suggest that within 20 years and considering a carbon price of US$50/tC, tree-planting activities could offset 1 year of global carbon emissions in the energy sector. However, if we account for country risk considerations-associated with political, economic and financial risks-carbon sequestration is reduced by approximately 60%. With respect to the geography of supply, illustrated by grid-scale maps, we find that most least-cost sites are located in regions of developing countries such as the Sub-Sahara, Southeast Brazil and Southeast Asia.

This paper analyzes the objectives and activities of space exploration programs, and presents action plans and guidelines for a future sustainable global space exploration platform. While new cooperative mechanisms have emerged in recent decades, the now-unfolding era of global space exploration will lead to new models of cooperation, reflecting the legacy of partnerships and the evolution of a global endeavor. Consequently, the successful alignment of national and international stakeholders along lines drawn by commonality of purpose will be crucial to achieve a basis for marshalling sufficient resources for ambitious space projects, and to create necessary new political, economic, and legal frameworks. For the development of a successful global space exploration program, traditional approaches may need to be supplanted by a new paradigm including focus on information exchange, organizational knowledge, and human capital e as practiced in high-performance organizations (HPOs) e that go well beyond the current international working groups and multinational space efforts.

This introduction to the collection provides our thoughts on where alcohol and drug studies in anthropology are going as we enter the new millennium. After commenting briefly on each of the papers that comprise the rest of the volume, we discuss what we see as the most important and exciting issues in the future and give our views on what alcohol and drug studies can offer to medical anthropology, anthropology writ large, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, and the realm of public policy and practical affairs. We call for a continued study by anthropologists of the whole array of pharmacologically active substances used by humans in different parts of the world, whether or not such studies are situated within medical anthropology. We note that many of these substances have received little attention from anthropologists to date, quite strikingly so in the cases of substances such as marijuana and methamphetamines. We emphasize that most scholars working in the anthropology of alcohol and drugs are concerned with the application of their findings to social problems, and we note that this has been especially true of research on alcoholic beverages and injection drugs. This leads us to a discussion of anthropology's involvement in public health intervention and policy work in a variety of settings. Such involvement is shown to have informed anthropological theory (notably political economic approaches) and to have enriched the methodological toolkits and forms of data analysis anthropologists use. Perhaps more importantly, we argue that such multidisciplinary involvement in applied work is most likely to eventuate in theoretical progress in alcohol and drug studies, since theory in the social sciences is not bound to singular disciplinary approaches. Thus we advocate for a ''hybrid vigor'' in this specialty area in the years ahead. #

Constitution-making is a ubiquitous but poorly understood phenomenon. There is much speculation but relatively little evidence about the impact of different design processes on constitutional outcomes. Much of the debate reduces to the question of who is involved in the process and when. We consider two central issues in this regard. The first is the problem of institutional self-dealing, or whether governmental organs that have something to gain from the constitutional outcome should be involved in the process. The second has to do with the merits of public involvement in the process. Both of these concerns have clear normative implications and both are amenable to straightforward social scientific analysis. This article surveys the relevant research on constitution-making, describes the conceptual issues involved in understanding constitution-making, reviews the various claims regarding variation in constitution-making processes, and presents a set of baseline empirical results from a new set of data on the content and process of constitution-making. 201 Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2009.5:201-223. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY -Law Library (Chicago Campus) on 11/09/10. For personal use only.

Approaches to the theory and practice of peace education are as varied as the situations across the world in which it is undertaken. Against a framework established by the Peace Education Commission of IPRA, current trends in the conceptualization and experience of peace education (from a Western view-point) are considered and reveal (1) acceptance of 'development' with 'justice' and 'human rights' as integral to the concept of peace; (2) emphasis on the psychological as well as socio-political, economic and structural conditions that maintain present injustices and oppressions; (3) renewed efforts to try out innovative educational approaches to a variety of learning situations, from the pre-school to adult formal and non-formal settings; (4) new concern about the materials, content and techniques of learning; and (5) fresh examination of the inter-relationships between theory and practice, research and action.

Miller have both written engaging analyses of the global agriculture/food system and its alternatives. Within this general subject area, the authors take interest in different foci and use different theoretical frameworks in their analyses. The result is two analyses that seem more complementary than competitive, which together offer us a comprehensive understanding of the global capitalist food regime and many food movements and initiatives producing alternatives to it. Albritton is a renowned political economist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at York University who offers us a Marxist analysis of one of the central contradictions of our time: why are so many in the West over--fed and over weight to the point of obesity while many more of the rest are malnourished and starving to death? His project delivers a critical analysis of the global food regime, how it is organized to d, or fed predominantly junk food), and how it is a major contributor to the killing of the planet through its dependence on petroleum and the extensive use of arable land for the production of non--food crops and products, such as tobacco, cotton, and ethanol. The purpose of his project is not to explicate the myriad of alternative food movements and initiatives and the messy work they undertake in trying to make change. This is where Edible Action comes in. Miller is a popular educator whose academic training in anthropology and environmental studies is complemented by her almost twenty years of experience in the alternative food, agriculture, and co--op sector. She is a gifted storyteller who teaches us about the ills of

Recent research has conceptualized sustainability as the environmental efficiency of wellbeing (EWEB). This concept takes into account the benefits societies are able to produce from their demands on the environment. Research along these lines indicates that countries vary widely in the efficiency with which they transform the Earth's resources into well-being. Here, we take up this finding as a puzzle to be explained. We construct a new measure of EWEB using the ecological footprint per capita (a measure of environmental consumption) and average life satisfaction (a measure of subjective well-being). We draw hypotheses from political economy, modernization, and sustainable consumption theories in the environmental social sciences. Using full information maximum likelihood estimation, we test the effects of climate, political, economic, and social factors on EWEB with a sample of 105 countries. Key findings include a negative quadratic effect of economic development on EWEB, a negative effect of income inequality, and a positive effect of social capital.

In July 2004, a Chinese claim that the ancient Kingdom of Koguryo (37 BC-AD 668) was China's vassal state ignited a firestorm of protest in South Korea. The decade-long South Korean love affair with China appears to have ended, as increasing numbers of South Koreans have begun to view their colossal neighbor with new suspicion. What were the causes and consequences of this controversy? Rather than forwarding the usual political, economic and security explanations, this paper interrogates the deeper identity politics at stake, arguing that the Koguryo controversy implicates the very meaning of being Korean or Chinese in the 21st century.

The last 10 years have witnessed numerous attempts to evaluate the merits of new theoretical approaches -ranging from Actor Network Theory to 'post-structural' Political Economy and inhabiting a 'post-Political Economy' theoretical space -to the explanation of global agricultural change. This article examines Convention Theory (CT) as one such alternative approach, assessing its potential in the context of ongoing change within commercial organic agriculture in New Zealand. More specifically, CT is used to expose the insufficiency of recent ideas of conventionalisation and bifurcation, both reflecting more traditional Political Economic approaches, as explanatory concepts for the emerging condition of the New Zealand organic sector. In this paper, the concept of worlds of justification as developed in CT is utilised to address the emerging complexity of organic production. While farmers supplying a more diversified domestic market can be distinguished from those supplying export markets, an exclusive focus on such distinctions ignores the influential role of extra-economic factors on the viability of organic production systems. Thus, in addition to what are classified as market and industrial worlds in CT, the paper addresses aspects of civic, green, domestic, inspired and renown worlds. Producers' selections of organic certification organisations are used to demonstrate the interaction of these worlds in the development of the organic sector in New Zealand. The article concludes with the imperative to move 'beyond bifurcation' and acknowledge the greater complexity of negotiated outcomes that might be achieved from a CT perspective than from existing political economy-derived models like conventionalisation and bifurcation.

The British influence on the teak trade since the early 1830s forced the Thai government (Bangkok) to increase its direct interference in the affairs of the northern tributary states (Lan Na) because of a threat to annex the states that stemmed from problems in the timber business. As a result, the influence of the northern princes in political economic power was almost entirely destroyed; thus the princes intensified their efforts to gain income from agricultural taxes and fees, thus creating pressure on the availability of arable land for Thai farmers, who were forced to find other places with cheaper taxes. The establishment of the Royal Forestry Department in 1896, led by Englishmen up to 1932, planted a long-lasting influence on the future of Thailand's forestry policy, which was since then set as "cutting and processing timber for export to Europe."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License A History of Seafood in Irish Cuisine and Culture Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Lecturer in Culinary Arts, Dublin Institute of Technology 'One of the many paradoxes which bloom as freely as the shamrock in its native land is this; that the coasts of the emerald isle are rich in seafood, but that the Irish people have on the whole been shy of consuming it. One has only to imagine what would happen on these coasts, if the people of, say, Singapore were suddenly transplanted thither, to realise the extent of this shyness.' 1

We will cover basics of political economics such as models of Downsian political competition, parliamentary decision making, special interests and informative lobbying, and discuss their usefulness in understanding political processes such as recent presidential and parliamentary elections around the World. A less conventional part includes material on political economy of non-democratic regimes. The course requirements include 2 home assignments essays, with each assignment requiring some reading, some internet search and some model-building, and a mid-term exam, where the task will be to develop a theory to explain a certain empirical pattern. Essays' weight is 40% of grade, mid-term and the final exam is 25% each, and the balance is for class participation. Office hours by appointment. Asterisks denote required reading. Papers without asterisks are supplementary and should be read by those interested in political economics.

The present period of economic globalization originated following World War II. Given the strongly protectionist tendencies prevailing at the time, how did this happen? Structural economic and military causes, along with intervening coalitional and institutional factors, are considered. Trade policy change is examined in the five largest trading economies—Britain, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and the United States. Structural economic causes best explain why protectionist tendencies were so strong, and why they were weakest in the United States and the Federal Republic. The liberalizing trend inaugurated in the United States and the Federal Republic was also facilitated by coalitional side payments to agriculture. Cold War–related military interests appear to have been the strongest impetus behind the unilateral form of the liberalization.

Smith and Marx had two very different opinions of capitalism, that although formed a generation apart, provide completely different conceptions of the nature of the system. This essay explains both Smith and Marx's views, how they came to be and what it means for their outlook on the current economic mode of production.

Written in the twilight of the Mbeki Presidency, this paper considers the role that skills development has in the sustainability of the South African political–economic project. It explores some of the disarticulations of public policy and argues that these both undermine public sector delivery and open up opportunities for private provision to be, under certain circumstances, more responsive to the challenges of national development. We argue that there is a possibility that the state could work more smartly with both sets of providers. Crucially, however, this would necessitate working more smartly within itself. This was a major plank of the Mbeki strategy but it has failed conspicuously with regard to the Education–Labour relationship. Whether a new President can achieve a radical reworking of this relationship may be an important indicator of the viability of any new development project.The article concludes with reflections on the renewed international interest in skills development as a way of responding to the real and imagined pressures and opportunities of globalisation. Given the limited success of South Africa in pursuing skills development, we ask whether other African governments are any more likely to achieve a genuine combination of political, social and economic sustainability. The sustainability of national development projects in Africa is likely to continue to be problematic, and skills development will only ever be able to play a limited role in addressing this challenge. Nonetheless, governments can do more to support the sustainability of these skills development systems and need to pay attention to both public and private provision in so doing.

At the end of this century we are witnessing an unprecedented increase in legal claims for both, human rights and the environment. Never before have so many people raised so many demands for human and environmental protection. Like human rights, environmental law touches upon all spheres of human activity. Quite obviously, human rights and the environment are closely related.