The Experts below are selected from a list of 32889 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
François Lerin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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From total State to anarchic market: management of medicinal and aromatic plants in Albania
Regional Environmental Change, 2021Co-Authors: Claire Bernard-mongin, Valter Hoxha, François LerinAbstract:Medicinal and aromatic plants’ management raises increasingly important issues of sustainable use of natural resources, biodiversity conservation, economic growth, social inclusiveness and rural development. This paper examines the genesis and development of the medicinal and aromatic plant (MAP) sector in Albania since 1945. This sector is of national importance and steered by a growing international market. The sustainable management of MAPs is a central issue in both practical and analytical terms. We develop a longitudinal analysis combining the use of documents and archives, statistical and operational data and field studies with an analytical focus rooted in institutional analysis development (IAD) and global value-chain analysis (GVC). We describe the changing system of rules alongside two historical dystopias: total Communist State control versus an unregulated (anarchical) market. The paper explains the complexity of the non-sustainable and non-optimum management of MAPs in Albania and identifies major limiting factors in both dystopias. Attempts to establish territory-based resource management and a relevant management community are thwarted by lock-in along the value chain under export-driven monopolist/monopsony control, conflicting institutional interplays over access to the resource and inadequate knowledge on sustainable MAP use. Overcoming these shortcomings requires tackling the diversity of local situations and plant ecology. The paper highlights the need for a renewed form of community engagement in natural resource governance within global value chains.
Claire Bernard-mongin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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From total State to anarchic market: management of medicinal and aromatic plants in Albania
Regional Environmental Change, 2021Co-Authors: Claire Bernard-mongin, Valter Hoxha, François LerinAbstract:Medicinal and aromatic plants’ management raises increasingly important issues of sustainable use of natural resources, biodiversity conservation, economic growth, social inclusiveness and rural development. This paper examines the genesis and development of the medicinal and aromatic plant (MAP) sector in Albania since 1945. This sector is of national importance and steered by a growing international market. The sustainable management of MAPs is a central issue in both practical and analytical terms. We develop a longitudinal analysis combining the use of documents and archives, statistical and operational data and field studies with an analytical focus rooted in institutional analysis development (IAD) and global value-chain analysis (GVC). We describe the changing system of rules alongside two historical dystopias: total Communist State control versus an unregulated (anarchical) market. The paper explains the complexity of the non-sustainable and non-optimum management of MAPs in Albania and identifies major limiting factors in both dystopias. Attempts to establish territory-based resource management and a relevant management community are thwarted by lock-in along the value chain under export-driven monopolist/monopsony control, conflicting institutional interplays over access to the resource and inadequate knowledge on sustainable MAP use. Overcoming these shortcomings requires tackling the diversity of local situations and plant ecology. The paper highlights the need for a renewed form of community engagement in natural resource governance within global value chains.
Valter Hoxha - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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From total State to anarchic market: management of medicinal and aromatic plants in Albania
Regional Environmental Change, 2021Co-Authors: Claire Bernard-mongin, Valter Hoxha, François LerinAbstract:Medicinal and aromatic plants’ management raises increasingly important issues of sustainable use of natural resources, biodiversity conservation, economic growth, social inclusiveness and rural development. This paper examines the genesis and development of the medicinal and aromatic plant (MAP) sector in Albania since 1945. This sector is of national importance and steered by a growing international market. The sustainable management of MAPs is a central issue in both practical and analytical terms. We develop a longitudinal analysis combining the use of documents and archives, statistical and operational data and field studies with an analytical focus rooted in institutional analysis development (IAD) and global value-chain analysis (GVC). We describe the changing system of rules alongside two historical dystopias: total Communist State control versus an unregulated (anarchical) market. The paper explains the complexity of the non-sustainable and non-optimum management of MAPs in Albania and identifies major limiting factors in both dystopias. Attempts to establish territory-based resource management and a relevant management community are thwarted by lock-in along the value chain under export-driven monopolist/monopsony control, conflicting institutional interplays over access to the resource and inadequate knowledge on sustainable MAP use. Overcoming these shortcomings requires tackling the diversity of local situations and plant ecology. The paper highlights the need for a renewed form of community engagement in natural resource governance within global value chains.
Adam S Chilton - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the political motivations of the united States bilateral investment treaty program
Social Science Research Network, 2016Co-Authors: Adam S ChiltonAbstract:The Untied States has signed 47 Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) over the last three decades. The standard explanation for why the United States’ government signed those BITs is that it was motivated by a desire to promote the development of international investment law and to protect American capital invested abroad. An alternative explanation, however, is that the United States has largely used BITs as a foreign policy tool to improve relationships with strategically important countries in the developing world. This project uses qualitative and quantitative evidence to assess whether the United States was motivated to sign BITs based on investment considerations or political considerations. The qualitative evidence suggests that U.S. executive branch officials viewed BITs as a potential way to cement and strengthen relationships with politically important countries. The quantitative evidence suggests that proxies for investment considerations — like trade and FDI flows — are weak predictors of U.S. BIT formation, but that political considerations — like military aid and whether a country was formerly a Communist State — are consistently statistically significant predictors. Taken together, the evidence supports the argument that political considerations are better predictors of the BITs the United States signed than investment considerations.
Michael E Osullivan - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the east german State and the catholic church 1945 1989 by bernd schaefer the east german State and the catholic church 1945 1989 by bernd schaefer translated by patricia c sutcliffe studies in german history series new york berghahn books 2010 ix 303 pp 90 00 us cloth
Canadian journal of history, 2012Co-Authors: Michael E OsullivanAbstract:The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945-1989, by Bernd Schaefer. Translated by Patricia C. Sutcliffe. Studies in German History series. New York, Berghahn Books, 2010. ix, 303 pp. $90.00 US (cloth). This translation of Bernd Schaefer's first book provides an English-speaking audience overdue access to a genuinely authoritative work of scholarship. The East German State and the Catholic Church analyzes Church-State relations from the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until its collapse, a topic that suffers neglect in comparison to the voluminous academic literature about western German Catholicism. Besides retaining relevancy almost fifteen years after its initial publication in German, this volume represents a building block for all future research about Catholicism under the East German dictatorship. The book systematically supports one convincing thesis. Schaefer suggests practical approaches by both Church and State ultimately overcame the hostility inherent in the worldviews of Catholics and Communists to create a stable, long-term Kirchenpolitik. While the GDR never retreated from its utopian stand that the Party should hasten the end of a superstitious institution destined for irrelevancy, it understood short-term tactical reasons to pursue a conciliatory course. Despite show trials of priests in the late 1950s, the emphasis on Jugendweihe (secular confirmation ceremonies), and a policy of "differentiation" designed to erode Church unity, the Communist dictatorship required Church consent in order to achieve international recognition and receive profits from currency exchanges with western European countries. The Catholic Church opposed Communism as an existential threat and a godless ideology, but it also approached the GDR with expediency rather than open hostility. Eager to retain contact with the Vatican and West German Bishops, hopeful to avoid State repression, and open to the notion of an "eastern Heimat," East German Church officials accepted the sovereignty of the Communist State and pursued a policy of "political abstinence" to maintain the status quo. Schaefer's depiction of Alfred Bengsch, Bishop of Berlin and Chairman of the Berlin Conference of Ordinaries (BOK) from 1961 until his death in 1979, forms a pillar in the argument for the primacy of a pragmatic Kirchenpolitik during this era. Preceded by the more outspoken Cardinal Konrad von Preysing and succeeded by the less conciliatory Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Bengsch committed to a fragile balance between accommodation and dissent within the GDR. He pursued "political abstention" in order to preserve the Church's existence and maintain access to West Berlin and the Federal Republic after the construction of the Berlin Wall (p. 88). His relationship with the Ministry of State Security (MfS) best illustrates this delicate accommodation. Bengsch appointed certain high-ranking officials, such as Prelate Otto Gross, to serve as regular informants for the MfS and maintain productive relationships with the State. However, Bengsch successfully prohibited any other clergy from contact with the State so as to prevent the GDR from dividing Catholics with their policy of "differentaiation." Bengsch ultimately lacked sympathy for socialism. In fact, he objected to the Vatican when Rome pursued its own version of Ostpolitik during the 1960s and 1970s in order to leverage the stable Church-State relationship in the GDR into a better situation for Catholics in other Eastern European countries. …