Heaney and the neighbour: poetry between politics and ethics

In this essay I argue that Heaney uses the figure of the neighbour to examine questions of otherness and cultural difference and their relationship to history and politics. The neighbour is of course a figure that has played a central role in Western philosophy and theology for centuries, from the Gospels and Kant to Freud and Lacan. It is also a concept to which Western poetry often returns, particularly in the work of Herbert, Clare, Eliot and Auden. Heaney too belongs to this tradition, in that his oeuvre contains many poems which consider the relationship between neighbours, and do so in ways profoundly suggestive for consideration of the relationship between historical events, social structures, cultural difference and psychic affect. In my essay I argue that Heaney sketches a profoundly materialist conception of subjectivity in its relationship with the Other. In doing so I contrast Heaney’s treatment of the neighbour, with its emphasis on questions of politics and locality, to the treatment of the neighbour in the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.

EU membership of the WTO: international trade disputes and judicial protection of individuals by EU Courts

The European Union (EU) is embedded in a pluralistic legal context because of the EU and its Member States’ treaty memberships and domestic laws. Where EU conduct has implications for both the EU’s international trade relations and the legal position of individual traders, it possibly affects EU and its Member States’ obligations under the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO law) as well as the Union’s own multi-layered constitutional legal order. The present paper analyses the way in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) accommodates WTO and EU law in the context of international trade disputes triggered by the EU. Given the ECJ’s denial of direct effect of WTO law in principle, the paper focuses on the protection of rights and remedies conferred by EU law. It assesses the implications of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) – which tolerates the acceptance of retaliatory measures constraining traders’ activities in sectors different from those subject to the original trade dispute (Bananas and Hormones cases) – for the protection of ‘retaliation victims’. The paper concludes that governmental discretion conferred by WTO law has not affected the applicability of EU constitutional law but possibly shapes the actual scope of EU rights and remedies where such discretion is exercised in the EU’s general interest.

Economic evidence in regulatory disputes: revisiting the court-regulatory agency relationship in the US and the UK

This article examines the issue of the appropriate scope of review of economic evidence enshrined in the discretionary assessments of utility regulators in the US and the UK. It advances a balance of institutional competencies approach to the question of the degree of deference owed to the regulatory agency’s economic assessments. In doing so, it revisits the doctrinal positions advanced in the US and UK for the substantive review of administrative discretion, so as to become attuned to the challenges posed by economic evidence. Drawing on insights from political science and economics, the suggested approach illuminates the institutional disadvantages of the courts that may warrant a high degree of deference. At the same time, however, it remains sensitive to the polycentric elements of regulatory disputes as well as to a number of institutional realties that may attenuate the weight of such comparative institutional disadvantages.

Agreements and disputes over non-tariff measures

In trade agreements, governments can design remedies to ensure compliance (property rule) or to compensate victims (liability rule). This paper describes an economic framework to explain the pattern of remedies over non-tariff restrictions—particularly domestic subsidies and nonviolation complaints subject to liability rules. The key determinants of the contract form for any individual measure are the expected joint surplus from an agreement and the expected loss to the constrained government. The loss is higher for domestic subsidies and nonviolations because these are the policies most likely to correct domestic distortions. Governments choose property rules when expected gains from compliance are sufficiently high and expected losses to the constrained country are sufficiently low. Liability rules are preferable when dispute costs are relatively high, because inefficiencies in the compensation process reduce the number of socially inefficient disputes filed.

Foreign support, internal political disputes and mass killings

This paper studies the incentives underlying the relations between foreign countries and rival domestic groups. It models the interaction in a infinitely-repeated game between these three players. The domestic groups bargain for a split of the domestic surplus and may engage in violent dispute for power and in unilateral mass killing processes. The foreign country may choose to support one of these groups in exchange for monetary transfers. The paper characterizes the parametric set in which strategies leading to no violent disputes nor mass killings are Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibra in the presence of foreign support, but not in its absence.

Agrofuel policies in Brazil: paradigmatic and territorial disputes

The expansion of agrofuel crops challenges us to rethink policies, territories, human agency, and the paradigms used to explain them. In Brazil, policies supporting the expansion of agrofuel crops and the intensification of agrofuel production are reorganising rural land use and undermining some forms of participation in the capitalist and family modes of production. To reflect on this new reality, we study peasant movement reactions, proposals, and territorial disputes with agribusiness. Using the Pontal do Paranapanema region of São Paulo state as a case in point, the paper analyses territorial disputes between expanding sugarcane plantations and agrarian reform settlements as well as biodiesel production projects developed by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Western São Paulo Federation of Settlement and Family Farmer Associations (FAAFOP). It also analyses the agrofuel policies of other peasant organisations, including Via Campesina. The production of agrofuels has changed the processes of land acquisition and use by both agribusiness and the peasantry, provoking new insights into the nature of territorial conflicts and thereby stimulating the need to revise perspectives on the agrarian question in Brazil.

TERRITORIAL DISPUTES, LABOUR RELATIONS and ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH IN AGROHIDRONEGOCIO sugarcane IN THE PONTAL PARANAPANEMA (SP)

This research aims to analyze the conflict over land in Postal do Paranapanema (state of São Paulo, Brazil), considering the competition for water resources and the degradation of environmental health in the area called the agrohidronegocio sugarcane. The survey results indicate that the expansion of sugarcane cultivation in this region is causing the worsening health of workers. Moreover, the research also seeks to identify alternative models to the hegemonic project of regional development based on matrix agrohidroenergetica. For this, the research has as interlocutors various types of social movements such as the Landless Workers Movement and the Movement of Dam Affected, and union leaders.

Litigios pesqueros en América Latina = Fischeries disputes in Latin America

Incluye Bibliografía

Resolving international trade and investment disputes

Includes bibliography

The settlement of disputes under the WTO: the experience of Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography