State power and protected areas: Dynamics and contradictions of forest conservation in Madhya Pradesh, India

The traditionally coercive and state-controlled governance of protected areas for nature conservation in developing countries has in many cases undergone change in the context of widespread decentralization and liberalization. This article examines an emerging "mixed" (coercive, community- and market-oriented) conservation approach in managed-resource protected areas and its effects on state power through a case study on forest protection in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The findings suggest that imperfect decentralization and partial liberalization resulted in changed forms, rather than uniform loss, of state power. A forest co-management program paradoxically strengthened local capacity and influence of the Forest Department, which generally maintained its territorial and knowledge-based control over forests and timber management. Furthermore, deregulation and reregulation enabled the state to withdraw from uneconomic activities but also implied reduced place-based control of non-timber forest products. Generally, the new policies and programs contributed to the separation of livelihoods and forests in Madhya Pradesh. The article concludes that regulatory, community- and market-based initiatives would need to be better coordinated to lead to more effective nature conservation and positive livelihood outcomes.

Gene-Age Interactions in Blood Pressure Regulation: A Large-Scale Investigation with the CHARGE, Global BPgen, and ICBP Consortia.

Although age-dependent effects on blood pressure (BP) have been reported, they have not been systematically investigated in large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs). We leveraged the infrastructure of three well-established consortia (CHARGE, GBPgen, and ICBP) and a nonstandard approach (age stratification and metaregression) to conduct a genome-wide search of common variants with age-dependent effects on systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP), mean arterial (MAP), and pulse (PP) pressure. In a two-staged design using 99,241 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 20 genome-wide significant (p ≤ 5 × 10(-8)) loci by using joint tests of the SNP main effect and SNP-age interaction. Nine of the significant loci demonstrated nominal evidence of age-dependent effects on BP by tests of the interactions alone. Index SNPs in the EHBP1L1 (DBP and MAP), CASZ1 (SBP and MAP), and GOSR2 (PP) loci exhibited the largest age interactions, with opposite directions of effect in the young versus the old. The changes in the genetic effects over time were small but nonnegligible (up to 1.58 mm Hg over 60 years). The EHBP1L1 locus was discovered through gene-age interactions only in whites but had DBP main effects replicated (p = 8.3 × 10(-4)) in 8,682 Asians from Singapore, indicating potential interethnic heterogeneity. A secondary analysis revealed 22 loci with evidence of age-specific effects (e.g., only in 20 to 29-year-olds). Age can be used to select samples with larger genetic effect sizes and more homogenous phenotypes, which may increase statistical power. Age-dependent effects identified through novel statistical approaches can provide insight into the biology and temporal regulation underlying BP associations.

Small Cities, Neoliberal Governance and Sustainable Development in the Global South : A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda

Development and environmental issues of small cities in developing countries have largely been overlooked although these settlements are of global demographic importance and often face a "triple challenge"; that is, they have limited financial and human resources to address growing environmental problems that are related to both development (e.g., pollution) and under-development (e.g., inadequate water supply). Neoliberal policy has arguably aggravated this challenge as public investments in infrastructure generally declined while the focus shifted to the metropolitan "economic growth machines". This paper develops a conceptual framework and agenda for the study of small cities in the global south, their environmental dynamics, governance and politics in the current neoliberal context. While small cities are governed in a neoliberal policy context, they are not central to neoliberalism, and their (environmental) governance therefore seems to differ from that of global cities. Furthermore, "actually existing" neoliberal governance of small cities is shaped by the interplay of regional and local politics and environmental situations. The approach of urban political ecology and the concept of rural-urban linkages are used to consider these socio-ecological processes. The conceptual framework and research agenda are illustrated in the case of India, where the agency of small cities in regard to environmental governance seems to remain limited despite formal political decentralization.

A global analysis of Y-chromosomal haplotype diversity for 23 STR loci.

In a worldwide collaborative effort, 19,630 Y-chromosomes were sampled from 129 different populations in 51 countries. These chromosomes were typed for 23 short-tandem repeat (STR) loci (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385ab, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635, GATAH4, DYS481, DYS533, DYS549, DYS570, DYS576, and DYS643) and using the PowerPlex Y23 System (PPY23, Promega Corporation, Madison, WI). Locus-specific allelic spectra of these markers were determined and a consistently high level of allelic diversity was observed. A considerable number of null, duplicate and off-ladder alleles were revealed. Standard single-locus and haplotype-based parameters were calculated and compared between subsets of Y-STR markers established for forensic casework. The PPY23 marker set provides substantially stronger discriminatory power than other available kits but at the same time reveals the same general patterns of population structure as other marker sets. A strong correlation was observed between the number of Y-STRs included in a marker set and some of the forensic parameters under study. Interestingly a weak but consistent trend toward smaller genetic distances resulting from larger numbers of markers became apparent.

Measurement of the mechanical power of walking by satellite positioning system (GPS).

PURPOSE: This descriptive article illustrates the application of Global Positioning System (GPS) professional receivers in the field of locomotion studies. The technological challenge was to assess the external mechanical work in outdoor walking. METHODS: Five subjects walked five times during 5 min on an athletic track at different imposed stride frequency (from 70-130 steps x min(-1)). A differential GPS system (carrier phase analysis) measured the variation of the position of the trunk at 5 Hz. A portable indirect calorimeter recorded breath-by-breath energy expenditure. RESULTS: For a walking speed of 1.05 +/- 0.11 m x s(-1), the vertical lift of the trunk (43 +/- 14 mm) induced a power of 46.0 +/- 20.4 W. The average speed variation per step (0.15 +/- 0.03 m x s(-1)) produced a kinetic power of 16.9 +/- 7.2 W. As compared with commonly admitted values, the energy exchange (recovery) between the two energy components was low (39.1 +/- 10.0%), which induced an overestimated mechanical power (38.9 +/- 18.3 W or 0.60 W x kg(-1) body mass) and a high net mechanical efficiency (26.9 +/- 5.8%). CONCLUSION: We assumed that the cause of the overestimation was an unwanted oscillation of the GPS antenna. It is concluded that GPS (in phase mode) is now able to record small body movements during human locomotion, and constitutes a promising tool for gait analysis of outdoor unrestrained walking. However, the design of the receiver and the antenna must be adapted to human experiments and a thorough validation study remains to be conducted.

Beyond Conditionality versus Cooperation: Power and Resistance in the Case of EU Mobility Partnerships and Swiss Migration Partnerships

Migration partnerships (MPs) have become a key instrument in global migration governance. In contrast to traditional unilateral approaches, MPs emphasize a more comprehensive and inclusive tackling of migration issues between countries of origin, transit, and destination. Due to this cooperation-oriented concept, most of the existing studies on MPs neglect power questions within partnerships in line with the official discourse, reflecting a broader trend in the international migration governance literature. Others take an instrumentalist view in analysing the power of partnerships or focus on soft power. Illustrated with the examples of the European Mobility Partnerships (EU MPs) and the Swiss Migration Partnerships (CH MPs), we conduct an analysis based on a concept of productive power drawing on post-structural and post-colonial insights. Our main argument is that in contrast to their seemingly consent-oriented and technical character, MPs are sites of intense (discursive) struggles, and (re-)produce meanings, subjects, and resistances. A productive power analysis allows us to move beyond the dichotomy in the literature between coercion and cooperation, as well as between power and resistance more broadly.

The Role of Transnational Elites in shaping the evolving Field of Internet Governance

La gouvernance de l'Internet est une thématique récente dans la politique mondiale. Néanmoins, elle est devenue au fil des années un enjeu économique et politique important. La question a même pris une importance particulière au cours des derniers mois en devenant un sujet d'actualité récurrent. Forte de ce constat, c ette recherche retrace l'histoire de la gouvernance de l'Internet depuis son émergence comme enjeu politique dans les années 1980 jusqu'à la fin du Sommet Mondial sur la Société de l'Information (SMSI) en 2005. Plutôt que de se focaliser sur l'une ou l'autre des institutions impliquées dans la régulation du réseau informatique mondial, cette recherche analyse l'émergence et l'évolution historique d'un espace de luttes rassemblant un nombre croissant d'acteurs différents. Cette évolution est décrite à travers le prisme de la relation dialectique entre élites et non-élites et de la lutte autour de la définition de la gouvernance de l'Internet. Cette thèse explore donc la question de comment les relations au sein des élites de la gouvernance de l'Internet et entre ces élites et les non-élites expliquent l'emergence, l'évolution et la structuration d'un champ relativement autonome de la politique mondiale centré sur la gouvernance de l'Internet. Contre les perspectives dominantes réaliste et libérales, cette recherche s'ancre dans une approche issue de la combinaison des traditions hétérodoxes en économie politique internationale et des apports de la sociologie politique internationale. Celle-ci s'articule autour des concepts de champ, d'élites et d'hégémonie. Le concept de champ, développé par Bourdieu inspire un nombre croissant d'études de la politique mondiale. Il permet à la fois une étude différenciée de la mondialisation et l'émergence d'espaces de lutte et de domination au niveau transnational. La sociologie des élites, elle, permet une approche pragmatique et centrée sur les acteurs des questions de pouvoir dans la mondialisation. Cette recherche utilise plus particulièrement le concept d'élite du pouvoir de Wright Mills pour étudier l'unification d'élites a priori différentes autour de projets communs. Enfin, cette étude reprend le concept néo-gramscien d'hégémonie afin d'étudier à la fois la stabilité relative du pouvoir d'une élite garantie par la dimension consensuelle de la domination, et les germes de changement contenus dans tout ordre international. A travers l'étude des documents produits au cours de la période étudiée et en s'appuyant sur la création de bases de données sur les réseaux d'acteurs, cette étude s'intéresse aux débats qui ont suivi la commercialisation du réseau au début des années 1990 et aux négociations lors du SMSI. La première période a abouti à la création de l'Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) en 1998. Cette création est le résultat de la recherche d'un consensus entre les discours dominants des années 1990. C'est également le fruit d'une coalition entre intérêts au sein d'une élite du pouvoir de la gouvernance de l'Internet. Cependant, cette institutionnalisation de l'Internet autour de l'ICANN excluait un certain nombre d'acteurs et de discours qui ont depuis tenté de renverser cet ordre. Le SMSI a été le cadre de la remise en cause du mode de gouvernance de l'Internet par les États exclus du système, des universitaires et certaines ONG et organisations internationales. C'est pourquoi le SMSI constitue la seconde période historique étudiée dans cette thèse. La confrontation lors du SMSI a donné lieu à une reconfiguration de l'élite du pouvoir de la gouvernance de l'Internet ainsi qu'à une redéfinition des frontières du champ. Un nouveau projet hégémonique a vu le jour autour d'éléments discursifs tels que le multipartenariat et autour d'insitutions telles que le Forum sur la Gouvernance de l'Internet. Le succès relatif de ce projet a permis une stabilité insitutionnelle inédite depuis la fin du SMSI et une acceptation du discours des élites par un grand nombre d'acteurs du champ. Ce n'est que récemment que cet ordre a été remis en cause par les pouvoirs émergents dans la gouvernance de l'Internet. Cette thèse cherche à contribuer au débat scientifique sur trois plans. Sur le plan théorique, elle contribue à l'essor d'un dialogue entre approches d'économie politique mondiale et de sociologie politique internationale afin d'étudier à la fois les dynamiques structurelles liées au processus de mondialisation et les pratiques localisées des acteurs dans un domaine précis. Elle insiste notamment sur l'apport de les notions de champ et d'élite du pouvoir et sur leur compatibilité avec les anlayses néo-gramsciennes de l'hégémonie. Sur le plan méthodologique, ce dialogue se traduit par une utilisation de méthodes sociologiques telles que l'anlyse de réseaux d'acteurs et de déclarations pour compléter l'analyse qualitative de documents. Enfin, sur le plan empirique, cette recherche offre une perspective originale sur la gouvernance de l'Internet en insistant sur sa dimension historique, en démontrant la fragilité du concept de gouvernance multipartenaire (multistakeholder) et en se focalisant sur les rapports de pouvoir et les liens entre gouvernance de l'Internet et mondialisation. - Internet governance is a recent issue in global politics. However, it gradually became a major political and economic issue. It recently became even more important and now appears regularly in the news. Against this background, this research outlines the history of Internet governance from its emergence as a political issue in the 1980s to the end of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005. Rather than focusing on one or the other institution involved in Internet governance, this research analyses the emergence and historical evolution of a space of struggle affecting a growing number of different actors. This evolution is described through the analysis of the dialectical relation between elites and non-elites and through the struggle around the definition of Internet governance. The thesis explores the question of how the relations among the elites of Internet governance and between these elites and non-elites explain the emergence, the evolution, and the structuration of a relatively autonomous field of world politics centred around Internet governance. Against dominant realist and liberal perspectives, this research draws upon a cross-fertilisation of heterodox international political economy and international political sociology. This approach focuses on concepts such as field, elites and hegemony. The concept of field, as developed by Bourdieu, is increasingly used in International Relations to build a differentiated analysis of globalisation and to describe the emergence of transnational spaces of struggle and domination. Elite sociology allows for a pragmatic actor-centred analysis of the issue of power in the globalisation process. This research particularly draws on Wright Mill's concept of power elite in order to explore the unification of different elites around shared projects. Finally, this thesis uses the Neo-Gramscian concept of hegemony in order to study both the consensual dimension of domination and the prospect of change contained in any international order. Through the analysis of the documents produced within the analysed period, and through the creation of databases of networks of actors, this research focuses on the debates that followed the commercialisation of the Internet throughout the 1990s and during the WSIS. The first time period led to the creation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1998. This creation resulted from the consensus-building between the dominant discourses of the time. It also resulted from the coalition of interests among an emerging power elite. However, this institutionalisation of Internet governance around the ICANN excluded a number of actors and discourses that resisted this mode of governance. The WSIS became the institutional framework within which the governance system was questioned by some excluded states, scholars, NGOs and intergovernmental organisations. The confrontation between the power elite and counter-elites during the WSIS triggered a reconfiguration of the power elite as well as a re-definition of the boundaries of the field. A new hegemonic project emerged around discursive elements such as the idea of multistakeholderism and institutional elements such as the Internet Governance Forum. The relative success of the hegemonic project allowed for a certain stability within the field and an acceptance by most non-elites of the new order. It is only recently that this order began to be questioned by the emerging powers of Internet governance. This research provides three main contributions to the scientific debate. On the theoretical level, it contributes to the emergence of a dialogue between International Political Economy and International Political Sociology perspectives in order to analyse both the structural trends of the globalisation process and the located practices of actors in a given issue-area. It notably stresses the contribution of concepts such as field and power elite and their compatibility with a Neo-Gramscian framework to analyse hegemony. On the methodological level, this perspective relies on the use of mixed methods, combining qualitative content analysis with social network analysis of actors and statements. Finally, on the empirical level, this research provides an original perspective on Internet governance. It stresses the historical dimension of current Internet governance arrangements. It also criticise the notion of multistakeholde ism and focuses instead on the power dynamics and the relation between Internet governance and globalisation.

Transnational private authority and the participation of workers' organizations in the regulatory space surrounding the employment relationship

Most corporate codes of conduct and multi-stakeholder sustainability standards guarantee workers' rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, but many authors are sceptical about the concrete impact of codes and standards of this kind. In this paper we use Hancher and Moran's (1998) concept of 'regulatory space' to assess the potential of private transnational regulation to support the growth of trade union membership and collective bargaining relationships, drawing on some preliminary case study results from a project on the impact of the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) social conditionality on worker organization and social dialogue. One of the major effects of neoliberal economic and industrial policy has been the routine exclusion of workers' organizations from regulatory processes on the grounds that they introduce inappropriate 'political' motives into what ought to be technical decision-making processes. This, rather than any direct attack on their capacity to take action, is what seems best to explain the global decline in union influence (Cradden 2004; Howell 2007; Howe 2012). The evidence we present in the paper suggests that private labour regulation may under certain conditions contribute to a reversal of this tendency, re-establishing the legitimacy of workers' organizations within regulatory processes and by extension the legitimacy of their use of economic and social power. We argue that guarantees of freedom of association and bargaining rights within private regulation schemes are effective to the extent that they can be used by workers' organizations in support of a claim for access to the regulatory space within which the terms and conditions of the employment relationship are determined. Our case study evidence shows that certain trade unions in East Africa have indeed been able to use IFC and other private regulation schemes as levers to win recognition from employers and to establish collective bargaining relationships. Although they did not attempt to use formal procedures to make a claim for the enforcement of freedom of association rights on behalf of their members, the unions did use enterprises' adherence to private regulation schemes as a normative point of reference in argument and political exchange about worker representation. For these unions, the regulation was a useful addition to the range of arguments that they could deploy as means to justify their demand for recognition by employers. By contrast, the private regulation that helps workers' organizations to win access to regulatory processes does little to ensure that they are able to participate meaningfully, whether in terms of technical capacity or of their ability to mobilize social power as a counterweight to the economic power of employers. To the extent that our East African unions were able to make an impact on terms and conditions of employment via their participation in regulatory space it was solely on the basis of their own capacities and resources and the application of national labour law.

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Services account for more than 70 percent of GDP in the OECD countries and 50 percent of developing and transition countries. Standardization works to impose common norms on highly differentiated current practice as to availability, provision, and use of services. Some rely on public services, others provide consumer protection or relate to security matters involving liability issues for users and providers alike. Service standards reflect the development of a transnational hybrid authority which exercises a distinct form of market power in the reorganisation of the global capitalist economy towards services.