Development Aid to Water Management in Mali: The Actors, ‘Global’ Paradigms, and ‘Local’ Translations

Development aid involves a complex network of numerous and extremely heterogeneous actors. Nevertheless, all actors seem to speak the same ‘development jargon’ and to display a congruence that extends from the donor over the professional consultant to the village chief. And although the ideas about what counts as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aid have constantly changed over time —with new paradigms and policies sprouting every few years— the apparent congruence between actors more or less remains unchanged. How can this be explained? Is it a strategy of all actors to get into the pocket of the donor, or are the social dynamics in development aid more complex? When a new development paradigm appears, where does it come from and how does it gain support? Is this support really homogeneous? To answer the questions, a multi-sited ethnography was conducted in the sector of water-related development aid, with a focus on 3 paradigms that are currently hegemonic in this sector: Integrated Water Resources Management, Capacity Building, and Adaptation to Climate Change. The sites of inquiry were: the headquarters of a multilateral organization, the headquarters of a development NGO, and the Inner Niger Delta in Mali. The research shows that paradigm shifts do not happen overnight but that new paradigms have long lines of descent. Moreover, they require a lot of work from actors in order to become hegemonic; the actors need to create a tight network of support. Each actor, however, interprets the paradigms in a slightly different way, depending on the position in the network. They implant their own interests in their interpretation of the paradigm (the actors ‘translate’ their interests), regardless of whether they constitute the donor, a mediator, or the aid recipient. These translations are necessary to cement and reproduce the network.

Evolutionary methods for self-organizing cooperation in peer-to-peer networks

The Peer-to-Peer network paradigm is drawing the attention of both final users and researchers for its features. P2P networks shift from the classic client-server approach to a high level of decentralization where there is no central control and all the nodes should be able not only to require services, but to provide them to other peers as well. While on one hand such high level of decentralization might lead to interesting properties like scalability and fault tolerance, on the other hand it implies many new problems to deal with. A key feature of many P2P systems is openness, meaning that everybody is potentially able to join a network with no need for subscription or payment systems. The combination of openness and lack of central control makes it feasible for a user to free-ride, that is to increase its own benefit by using services without allocating resources to satisfy other peers’ requests. One of the main goals when designing a P2P system is therefore to achieve cooperation between users. Given the nature of P2P systems based on simple local interactions of many peers having partial knowledge of the whole system, an interesting way to achieve desired properties on a system scale might consist in obtaining them as emergent properties of the many interactions occurring at local node level. Two methods are typically used to face the problem of cooperation in P2P networks: 1) engineering emergent properties when designing the protocol; 2) study the system as a game and apply Game Theory techniques, especially to find Nash Equilibria in the game and to reach them making the system stable against possible deviant behaviors. In this work we present an evolutionary framework to enforce cooperative behaviour in P2P networks that is alternative to both the methods mentioned above. Our approach is based on an evolutionary algorithm inspired by computational sociology and evolutionary game theory, consisting in having each peer periodically trying to copy another peer which is performing better. The proposed algorithms, called SLAC and SLACER, draw inspiration from tag systems originated in computational sociology, the main idea behind the algorithm consists in having low performance nodes copying high performance ones. The algorithm is run locally by every node and leads to an evolution of the network both from the topology and from the nodes’ strategy point of view. Initial tests with a simple Prisoners’ Dilemma application show how SLAC is able to bring the network to a state of high cooperation independently from the initial network conditions. Interesting results are obtained when studying the effect of cheating nodes on SLAC algorithm. In fact in some cases selfish nodes rationally exploiting the system for their own benefit can actually improve system performance from the cooperation formation point of view. The final step is to apply our results to more realistic scenarios. We put our efforts in studying and improving the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was chosen not only for its popularity but because it has many points in common with SLAC and SLACER algorithms, ranging from the game theoretical inspiration (tit-for-tat-like mechanism) to the swarms topology. We discovered fairness, meant as ratio between uploaded and downloaded data, to be a weakness of the original BitTorrent protocol and we drew inspiration from the knowledge of cooperation formation and maintenance mechanism derived from the development and analysis of SLAC and SLACER, to improve fairness and tackle freeriding and cheating in BitTorrent. We produced an extension of BitTorrent called BitFair that has been evaluated through simulation and has shown the abilities of enforcing fairness and tackling free-riding and cheating nodes.

Giustizia sanitaria e diseguaglianze globali in salute: il caso dell'aiuto allo sviluppo in sanità

Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years that a group of people born in the same year should live. The estimate for those born in 2010 is 80.2 years for Italy. On the other side of the chart are a number of countries in sub Saharan Africa. Haiti is in last place: children born in this country in 2010 have a life expectancy by an average of even 30 years, fifty in less than peers born in Italy. From a bioethical point of view, the first question that arises is: Is it right? Is it right that there is such inequality in health? The answer is simple: it is not right. But if we ask ourselves what are the best solution to remedy this situation, the answers become more than one. The differences in life expectancy depends on many factors, including no doubt the effectiveness of health systems. The scope of this work is precisely that of justice in health care and how the different general concepts related to it can be applied in health care settings with very limited financial and human resources. The first chapter describes the main inequalities in global health. The second discusses the main theories of justice. In the next chapter we reason on official development assistance and health cooperation. In the fourth we analyze the contribution of theories of justice through such issues as equity in health, the right of access to health services and right to health. In the fifth chapter the aim is to reason about global justice, the role of health in this context and how the official development assistance in health can contribute.

Regulating State Aid: Inter-jurisdictional competition, public choice, and corporate governance

Depending on the regulatory regime they are subject to, governments may or may not be allowed to hand out state aid to private firms. The economic justification for state aid can address several issues present in the competition for capital and the competition for transfers from the state. First, there are principal-agent problems involved at several stages. Self-interested politicians might enter state aid deals that are the result of extensive rent-seeking activities of organized interest groups. Thus the institutional design of political systems will have an effect on the propensity of a jurisdiction to award state aid. Secondly, fierce competition for firm locations can lead to over-spending. This effect is stronger if the politicians do not take into account the entirety of the costs created by their participation in the firm location race. Thirdly, state aid deals can be incomplete and not in the interest of the citizens. This applies if there are no sanctions if firms do not meet their obligations from receiving aid, such as creating a certain number of jobs or not relocating again for a certain amount of time. The separation of ownership and control in modern corporations leads to principal-agent problems on the side of the aid recipient as well. Managers might receive personal benefits from subsidies, the use of which is sometimes less monitored than private finance. This can eventually be to the detriment of the shareholders. Overall, it can be concluded that state aid control should also serve the purpose of regulating the contracting between governments and firms. An extended mandate for supervision by the European Commission could include requirements to disincentive the misuse of state aid. The Commission should also focus on the corporate governance regime in place in the jurisdiction that awards the aid as well as in the recipient firm.

Servizi offerti su spazi demaniali in concessione e diritto dell'Unione Europea

La tesi analizza, sotto vari aspetti del diritto dell’Unione Europea, i servizi che sono offerti su spazi demaniali. Si articola in quattro capitoli: Il primo capitolo ricostruisce, valutandone l’impatto sui servizi che sono oggetto della presente indagine, lo sviluppo giurisprudenziale della Libertà di Stabilimento e della Libera Prestazione di Servizi, analizzando, altresì, i principi generali e l’art.16 della Carta dei Diritti Fondamentali dell’Unione. Il secondo capitolo è, invece, dedicato al diritto secondario, ossia alla Direttiva 2006/123/CE, alle Direttive “Appalti” e alla Direttiva “Concessioni”. La prima, che nulla aggiunge al quadro normativo trattato nel primo capitolo, svolge, pertanto una vera e propria funzione appaltante e concessoria. Le seconde, invece, seppur non applicabili alle fattispecie ivi esaminate, restano utili per comprendere quale declinazione possano avere i principi di eguaglianza, di non discriminazione, di trasparenza, di pubblicità e di concorrenza nella regolazione dei servizi offerti su spazi demaniali. La terza, invece, in quanto a rilevanza, presenta alcuni punti critici che fanno propendere per una sua non applicabilità. Resta comunque utile sempre in materia di principi, i quali, come evidenziato nell’ultima parte del secondo capitolo, sono stati utilizzati dalla Corte di Giustizia, pur nella totale assenza, fino alla recente direttiva, di strumenti di diritto secondario applicabili alle concessioni. Il terzo capitolo, invece, affronta le problematiche emerse all’interno dell’ordinamento italiano e attua una comparazione tra il sistema italiano e quello portoghese, croato, francese, spagnolo. Il quarto capitolo, da ultimo, prende in considerazione il delicato equilibrio, sempre più attuale, tra principi in materia di appalti pubblici e aiuti di Stato, valutando come, sia il permanere dello status quo, sia un riordino non conforme alla Direttiva 2006/123/CE e ai principi da essa richiamati possa costituire un aiuto di Stato incompatibile con il mercato interno.