Bilateral investment treaties constitute an important instrument to facilitate global investment. Recent discussions in political theory have highlighted several normative concerns raised by bilateral investment treaties. One worry is that investment treaties undermine national self‐determination as they grant investors far‐reaching protections that can be legally enforced. Another worry is that the benefits and burdens entailed in bilateral investment treaties are distributed unfairly in a way that benefits investors at (...) the expense of states and disadvantaged groups within states. Instead of critiquing bilateral investment treaties from a perspective of global (distributive) justice, in this article I develop a class‐based critique. This involves a twofold departure. First, the article shifts the focus from distributions to the power relations that are built into the global capitalist economy and that come into sharp relief in the practice of global investment. Second, rather than focusing on the relation between states and investors, I claim that in a class‐based critique the relation between workers and investors should take centre stage. I argue that bilateral investment treaties are effectively an instrument of class domination, insofar as they reproduce and increase the power of transnational corporations while at the same time decreasing the power of workers. (shrink)

The international investment regime has come under increasing scrutiny, with several developing countries withdrawing from bilateral investment treaties in recent years. A central worry raised by c...

National governments have signed and ratified over three thousand International Investment Agreements (IIAs), which for the first time give multinational firms standing to sue host governments in international arbitration tribunals. IIAs have led to a host of high-profile and controversial legal disputes that have led to claims that investor state arbitration may be impeding governments in their ability to regulate and to protect their citizens’ well-being, a phenomenon known as “regulatory chill.” To understand the normative implications of regulatory chill, (...) I analyze investor state arbitration over tobacco in Australia and Latin America. I examine legislative discussions over possible regulatory changes in Australia and Uruguay, the two cases that have faced disputes over tobacco laws, as well as in Latin American countries that provide access to the legislative debates and had legislative initiatives that sought to strengthen tobacco legislation. These cases demonstrate that tobacco packaging laws in a number of countries have been delayed or reduced as a result of fears of potential arbitration among the government and legislators. This regulatory chill is normatively problematic as it suggests that states may be giving up more of their regulatory authority than they initially believed they would have to under IIAs. (shrink)

he article combines Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for common-pool resources and human rights provisions, including subsequent clarifications and jurisprudence. It analyses whether stronger local self-governance, embedded in the natural resource dimension of peoples’ rights to self-determination is a recommendable approach. Two changes in understanding are noted. First, the universal approval of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination as specified in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Second, the wide endorsement of the specific principle of free and prior informed (...) consent. As the exercise of peoples’ rights to self-determination is done on a collective level, it is important to have awareness of whether particularly affected and marginalized households and individuals are included or not included in the decision-making process. The article then reviews a range of new instruments adopted by the OECD and the UN for improved human rights awareness and compliance in the context of economic investments. The article finds that these instruments are still underutilized. Finally, the article identifies the role of human rights in bilateral investment treaties. It finds that there are less jurisdictional restrictions – as many treaties have a wide understanding of applicable law – than cognitive restrictions – as human rights competence is rarely sought when establishing tribunals mandated to solve investments disputes. (shrink)

Four decades have passed since the EU and China established diplomatic relations in 1975, and now became mutually indispensable economic partners, presenting both an opportunity and challenge. During that time, after the first market reforms were introduced in 1978, China has transitioned from a predominantly agricultural to industrial and service-oriented economy. On 11 December 2001, China also became the 143rd member of the WTO. The aim of this research is to quantitatively compare the US, EU and Chinese GDP from 1995 (...) to 2014, the US and Chinese outward FDI from 1995 to 2013, and the EU 28 Total Imports from and Exports to the US and China between 2002 to 2014, and analyse the impact of the exponentially rising Chinese investments in the European Union (EU). We have found that while the US economy experienced a regression in general, and exhibited outward FDI exponential decrease in particular, the Chinese outward FDI sustained an exponential growth. Our analysis has shown that the now weakened US dollar and diminished US economic and industrial power, along with the US designed and archaic post World War II European institutions, vitiated by the recent US Economic Recession, which has swept along the EU and all other US dependent foreign economies globally, are and will continue to experience the primary impact of the exponentially rising economic investment of China in the EU. Furthermore, we have found that the Chinese economic growth has been affecting both the EU identity and policies. Yet, its full effect is waiting to be realized. The Chinese investment in the EU is estimated to peak during the next decade, when China will become by far the foremost economic partner of the EU. This crossroad may be reached as soon as in few years’ time and contribute towards the EU – Asian regional stabilization. In the changing context of the Sino – EU - US relations, due to the exponentially growing economic prosperity and rising global influence of China, the EU international institutions and socio-political structures will re-emerge with the once forgotten access to the 21st Century Silk Road Economic Belt, “The Silk Road II”, between China and the EU in the foreseeable future. (shrink)

This article traces the history of the earliest bilateral tax treaties which were concluded prior to World War I. There are currently over 3000 bilateral tax treaties in existence and their fundamental concepts and terms can be traced back to the earliest treaties. This article explores the political and economic context of the early treaties to understand why countries entered into tax treaties. Tax treaties play an important role in facilitating economic integration (...) and as the European Union and other regional blocs seek to establish a single market, the historical context of tax treaties can assist in understanding their role in modern international economic relations. (shrink)

The past decade has seen major movements and mobilizations against the new crop of bilateral free trade and investment agreements being pursued by governments in the wake of the failure of global (World Trade Organization) and regional (e.g. Free Trade Area of the Americas) negotiations, and the defeat of an attempted Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1990s. However, in spite of much scholarly, non-governmental organization (NGO) and activist focus on transnational global justice activism, many of these (...) movements, such as the major multi-sectoral popular struggle over the recently-concluded US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, are hardly acknowledged in North America and Europe. With a shift in emphasis pushing liberalization and deregulation of trade and investment increasingly favouring lower-profile bilateral agreements, this article maps the resistance movements to these latest shifts in global free market capitalist relations and discusses the disconnect between these (mainly Southern) struggles and dominant scholarly and NGO conceptions of global justice and the global justice movement as well as questions of knowledge production arising from these movements. (shrink)

Although trust and reciprocity are ubiquitous in social exchange, their neurobiological substrate remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effect of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—a brain region critical for valuing social information—on individuals’ decisions in a trust game and in a risk game. In the trust game, one player, the investor, is endowed with a sum of money, which she can keep or invest. The amount she decides to invest is tripled and sent to the other player, (...) the trustee, who then decides what fraction to return to the investor. In separate runs, ten patients with focal bilateral damage to the vmPFC and control participants made decision while playing in the role of either investor or trustee with different anonymous counterparts in each run. A risk game was also included in which the investor faced exactly the same decisions as in the trust game, but a random device (i.e., a computer), not another player, determined the final payoffs. Results showed that vmPFC patients’ investments were not modulated by the type of opponent player (e.g., human vs. computer) present in the environment. Thus, vmPFC patients showed comparable risk-taking preferences both in social (trust game) and nonsocial (risk game) contexts. In stark contrast, control participants were less willing to take risk and invest when they believed that they were interacting with people than a computer. Furthermore, when acted as trustee, vmPFC patients made lower back transfers toward investors, thereby showing less reciprocity behavior. Taken together, these results indicate that social valuation and emotion subserved by vmPFC have a critical role in trusting and reciprocity decisions. The present findings support the hypothesis that vmPFC damage may impair affective systems specifically designed for mediating social transaction with other individuals. (shrink)

France’s agreements on the joint management of migration flows figure centrally within studies of bilateral migration agreements. With their origins in friendship and navigation treaties of the late 19th century, the AJMs are successors to the postcolonial, circular mobility conventions of the 1960s, and are uniquely positioned for periodizing the evolution of bilaterally negotiated labor mobilities. Nonetheless, due to the European Union’s reluctance to embrace mass regularization and the EU Member States’ legislative powers over labor markets, they have (...) time and again scotched France’s ambition to leverage preferential labor market entries in exchange for more cooperation over irregular migration. Through documents and statistical data analysis, this Article studies the case of Senegal’s negotiation of additional pathways to France for its lower-skilled workers. At the center is France’s administrative court of appeals, which has confirmed the broad margin of discretion over Art. 42 in the AJM between France and Senegal. This jurisprudence has decoupled the automatic linkage between a job listed under duress in France under the Annex to the AJM and the entitlement to exceptional admission. We argue that France’s courts have removed a privilege of Senegalese workers, which has re-politicized France’s migration diplomacy with Senegal. At the same time, retention of the prefectorial discretionary power has levelled the playing field among West and North African countries that have concluded similar bilateral agreements with France. This Article adds to the research on bilateral migration agreements by proposing a multilevel legal analysis, which studies AJMs in the context of France’s common law, EU labor and return directives, and the multilateral of WTO/gats liberalization. (shrink)

How is legitimacy to be secured for constitution-like legal orders operating beyond the state? Some scholars recommend connecting aspects of global law to human rights adjudication and enforcement by adopting their preferred method for resolving conflicts, namely, proportionality analysis. Adopting a frame of analysis widely embraced by apex courts might generate the requisite regime legitimacy, it is argued. This turns out to be a strategy that is difficult to pursue in the realm of international investment law, a global legal (...) order made up of over 3,300 investment and regional treaties, enforced by private systems of dispute resolution, that incorporates standards of treatment familiar to national constitutional law. By undertaking an analysis of statements made by relevant actors in the field, principally investment lawyers and arbitrators, we learn that there is not that much interest in taking up proportionality analysis, despite the legitimacy problems that continue to dog the system. Whatever the purported advantages of turning to proportionality, it turns out that investment lawyers and arbitrators are not so interested in embracing logics other than one preoccupied with owing solicitude to foreign investors. This reluctance renders investment law a less legitimate, and therefore less sustainable, form of constitution-like global law. (shrink)

ASEAN agricultural workers represent one of the most vulnerable groups of workers regardless of citizenship. While bilateral agreements focus on general migration governance mechanisms, the specifics of agricultural workers’ rights and protections fall outside their scope. Due to the seasonal nature of cross-border agriculture, these are flexible precarious workers readily available to employers in the borderlands that often do not invest in worker health and social security. The Article reveals how foreign migrant agricultural workers with and without work permits (...) continue to fall between the gaps of national labor protection laws, due to both legal structural exclusions as well as the particular vulnerabilities of being noncitizen workers in remote, unsafe workplaces. This Article documents some of the developments during 20172019 in migrant employment in export cash crops. The next challenge for the future is developing mechanisms for bilateralism to lower migration costs, with a commitment to genuinely safe migration, as well as the establishment of long-term equitable working conditions for all migrant workers. The major findings demonstrate how the two main reasons for the discrepancies between the BLA and labor protections have to do with the noninterventionist approach of ASEAN and a series of technical exclusions in Thailand’s labor law and regulation. (shrink)

Australia and India have had few reasons in the past to develop systematic and significant levels of economic engagement. This was due to very different positions they have held in the world-system since the Second World War. De-colonization, the fall of the British Empire, the weak status of the British Commonwealth, and the realpolitik of the Cold War saw India and Australia located on different parts of the geo-political and economic world map with small demographic and cultural flows, and insignificant (...) economic trade. Both countries developed similar economic policy regimes that were essentially state-led nationalist projects of economic development with concomitant policies of import-substitution, local industry-subsidization, highly-regulated financial systems, and high tariffs. The last quarter of the 20th century saw a radical revision of both nations’ economic strategies, with Australia moving first to drop many of its trade barriers in the 1970s and ’80s. It is now one of the most open economies in the world. India’s liberalization programme commenced much later in 1991 but nonetheless has had a dramatic impact on its economic fortunes and growing status in the world economy. With these changes there are increasing opportunities for bilateral trade and a greater economic enmeshment in regional engagements and alignments in the Indian Ocean and in wider Asian fora. One significant indicator of change in growing Australia-India economic engagement is to look at Foreign Direct Investment (hereafter FDI). Currently, the movement of FDI between these two countries is still not very large but has a strong potential to grow over the short to medium term. This paper looks at the future prospect of this growth and asserts that, by engaging in areas of comparative advantage, it will benefit both national economies. Moreover, economic flows are also indicators of great social and cultural traffic. The movement of FDI between the two countries will not only encourage greater flow of peoples, especially outward migration from India to Australia, but also trigger more Australian expatriates living in India (from a very low base). Greater economic trade promises more cultural exchange. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates the process of technology transfer from developed to developing countries. It considers market-based policies contained in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which are proposed as tools to promote the transfer of technologies that can abate greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. It uses the case of India to exemplify the conditions that exist and issues that arise in a rapidly developing country that is a recipient of such investments. It contests the claim (...) that such market-based strategies embodied in the present climate policy framework can facilitate the transfer of technologies that offer ecologically sustainable and socially equitable solutions for developing countries. (shrink)

Putting migrant remittances into house construction and rebuilding is generally seen as either conspicuous consumption or productive investment, but in both cases the perspective is economistic. This article argues that only when the cultural dimension of economic action is understood will it be possible to comprehend migrant spending on houses. Specifically, this article seeks to understand why, in the case of the rural Tagalog village in this study, located in upland Batangas Province in the Philippines, overseas labour migrants build (...) houses that they do not even live in, but are given to parents or simply left unoccupied. The explanation is framed in relation to the meanings of houses in a culture of bilateral kinship, which the Philippines shares with most parts of Southeast Asia, but inflected by distinct colonial influences. The article demonstrates the ways in which houses as memorials serve as idioms of ties of relatedness within kin groups and the broader community, ties that are being transformed by global migration and experienced differently yet maintained, renegotiated yet sustained transnationally. (shrink)

The United States (U.S.) and Jordan launched negotiations for a free trade agreement in 2000.The US-JO FTA includes a preamble, nineteen articles, three annexes, joint statements, memorandums of understanding, and side letters. In addition to the interesting articles on labor and environment, the US-JO FTA provides the opportunity for Jordanian nationals to come to the U.S. to make investments and participate in trade. Under certain conditions, Jordanian nationals can enter the U.S. to render professional services. The purpose of this article (...) is to examine in detail article 8 of the US-JO FTA which relates to entry of nationals of one party into the territory of the other. The article starts by providing a brief background of the negotiation and conclusion of the US-JO FTA. Then, the article analyzes in detail the specific provision related to temporary entry of nationals. The article draws a comparison between US-JO FTA with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the more recent trade agreements between the U.S., Oman, Bahrain, and Morocco. Finally, the article observes that although the US-JO FTA, like all US FTAs, is designed to permit temporary entry, without intent to establish permanent residence, of persons, the U.S. should have provided Jordan with special and differential treatment for entry of its nationals. Taking into account the special circumstances of Jordan as a developing country with low-income status, high unemployment rate, and lack of resources, movement of business visitors, investors, intra-company transferees, and professionals should have been dealt with leniency so that the FTA could generate effective and real market access. (shrink)

This article reviews the practices and differing sets of attitudes North Americans have taken with respect to fairness in international trade and proposes a set of common considerations for ongoing debates about these matters. After reviewing the asymmetrical relations between Canada, the United States, and Mexico and the impact of multilateral trade agreements on bilateral trade between these countries, the article looks at four typical normative views with respect to trade held by North Americans. These views variously emphasize concerns (...) for protectionism, liberal fair play, distributive justice, and dissent in the name of the environment or the working classes. Acknowledging that the debates over what is fair are not likely to be easily resolved, we call for open political processes that allow these debates to proceed, and we identify five common points of reference that might usefully inform these debates. These comprise (1) respect for flexibility, (2) the importance of institutions, (3) greater attention to the commutative justice principles for fair exchanges and corresponding guarantees so that all countries possess basic power to bargain on their own behalf, (4) the need to find fitting balance between local, national, regional, and international trade, and (5) more concern for the ways false pricing and abusive transfer pricing distort international trading relations. (shrink)

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor vision and mission are to improve the people's living standards of Pakistan and China through bilateral investments, trade, cultural exchanges, and economic activities. To achieve this envisioned dream, Pakistan established the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority to further its completion, but Covid-19 slowed it down. This situation compelled the digitalization of CPEC. This article reviews the best practices and success stories of various digitalization and e-governance programs and, in this light, advises the implementation of the Ajman (...) Digital Governance model as a theoretical framework for CPEC digitalization. This article concludes that the Pakistani government needs to transform CPEC digitalization by setting up the CPEC Digitalization and Transformation Center at the CPECA office to attract more investors and businesses. (shrink)

Labor migration is often regulated internationally through bilateral treaties signed between states, determining the conditions under which migrants from one state may travel to the other state and reside there in order to work. These instruments are sometimes designated as memoranda of understanding and regarded as nonbinding agreements. Many remain unpublished and undisclosed. This Article assesses these design choices critically. It considers the interaction between bilateralism, obscurity and nonbindingness. It evaluates and rejects possible justifications for obscurity and nonbindingness. (...) Finally, it argues that these design choices should be resisted. Since bilateral labor agreements do not regulate strictly the bilateral relationship between two states, but rather create rights and obligations for various third-party individuals, they should be required to meet a rule of law requirement of transparency. (shrink)

The Eichmann trial, much like the Nuremberg trials before it, captured some of the perplexities of the emerging norms of cosmopolitan justice. This chapter discusses that since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, one has entered a phase in the evolution of global civil society which is characterized by a transition from international norms to cosmopolitan norms of justice. Norms of international justice most commonly arise through treaty obligations and bilateral or multilateral agreements among states and (...) their representatives. They regulate relations among states and other principals that are authorized to act as the agents of states in multiple domains, ranging from trade and commerce to war and security, the environment, and the media. Cosmopolitan norms of justice, whatever the conditions of their legal origination, accrue to individuals as moral and legal persons in a worldwide civil society. (shrink)

This paper discusses the economic, legal, moral, and political difficulties in developing drugs for the developing world. It argues that large, global pharmaceutical companies have social responsibilities to the developing world, and that they may exercise these responsibilities by investing in research and development related to diseases that affect developing nations, offering discounts on drug prices, and initiating drug giveaways. However, these social responsibilities are not absolute requirements and may be balanced against other obligations and commitments in light of economic, (...) social, legal, political, and other conditions. How a company decides to exercise its social responsibilities to the developing world depends on the prospects for a reasonable profit and the prospects for a productive business environment. Developing nations can either help or hinder the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to exercise social responsibility through various policies and practices. To insure that companies can make a reasonable profit, developing nations should honor pharmaceutical product patents and adhere to international intellectual property treaties, such as the Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement. To insure the companies have a good business environment, developing nations should try to promote the rule of law, ethical business practices, stable currencies, reliable banking systems, free and open markets, democracy, and other conditions conducive to business. Overall, this paper advocates for reciprocity and cooperation between pharmaceutical companies and developing nations to address the problem of developing drugs for the developing world. In pursuing this cooperative approach, developing nations may use a variety of other techniques to encourage pharmaceutical companies to act responsibly, such as subsidizing pharmaceutical research, helping to design and implement research protocols, providing a guaranteed market, and bulk buying. (shrink)

"Recent decades have witnessed a sharp rise in the number of state apologies for historical and more recent injustices, ranging from enslavement to displacement and from violations of treaties to war crimes, all providing the backdrop to displays of official regret. Featuring a host of leading authors in the field, this book seeks to contribute to the growing literature on official apologies by effectively combining philosophical reflection and empirical analysis. It achieves two interrelated goals: it enriches the theoretical debates (...) on the nature and functions of apologies while bringing forth new insights from hitherto unexamined normative horizons. It further addresses often overlooked aspects of political apologies, such as their non-verbal dimension as well as religious overtones, while testing theoretical reflections through encounters with real practices of state apologies. Finally, the book explores the obstacles to, and the limitations of, political apologies. The result is an excellent interdisciplinary volume that affords the reader a better understanding of conditions for a legitimate and successful state apology. -/- TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction PART I: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 2. Beyond the Ideal Political Apology; Alice MacLachlan 3. Political Apologies and Categorical Apologies; Nick Smith PART II: RITES AND RITUALS OF REGRET 4. From Mea Culpa to Nostra Culpa: A Reparative Apology from the Catholic Church?; Danielle Celermajer 5. The Power of Ritual Ceremonies in State Apologies: An Empirical Analysis of the Bilateral Polish-Russian Commemoration Ceremony in Katyn in 2010; Michel-André Horelt 6. Confessing the Holocaust: The Evolution of German Guilt; Stefan Engert PART III: CHALLENGING CASES 7. Revisiting the 'Membership Theory of Apologies': Apology Politics in Australia and Canada; Melissa Nobles 8. The Canadian Apology To Indigenous Residential School Survivors: A Case Study of Re-Negotiation of Social Relations; Neil Funk-Unrau 9. What Makes a State Apology Authoritative? Lessons from Post-Authoritarian Brazil; Nina Schneider PART IV: OBSTACLES AND LIMITATIONS 10. The Apology in Democracies: Reflections on the Challenges of Competing Goods, Citizenship, Nationalism and Pluralist Politics; Michael Cunningham 11. An Apology for Public Apologies; Juan Espindola 12. Reasoning Like a State: Integration and the Limits of Official Regret; Cindy Holder". (shrink)

It argues that states forge a relationship due to strategic needs such as economic or security needs. Slobodchikoff has developed a database composed of the whole population of bilateral treaties between Russia and each of the former Soviet republics, and examines all of these bilateral relationships. He finds that Russia indeed forged relationships with the former republics based on its strategic interests. However, despite Russia's strategic interests, it had to build a bilateral relationship that would address (...) the issues of mistrust and power asymmetry between the states. To achieve this, Russia and the former Soviet republics created treaty networks, which served to legitimize as well as legalize the independent status of each of the former republics while also increasing the cost to Russia of violating any of the treaties. (shrink)

This article applies social entropy theory to international trade law, suggesting that observed shifts in world trading system towards disorder are the consequence of insufficient ‘energy’ inputs in the form of an effective, centralized legal framework and focused authoritative organization. In support of this claim, the article draws attention to recognized, substantive deficiencies in the World Trade Organization (WTO). These include trade round negotiation impasse, the rise of bilateralism, indeterminacy in the treaty texts and inadequate enforcement procedures. These problems represent (...) increasing disorganization, or entropy, in the world trading system, a phenomenon characterized most notably by growing income inequality between states and failure to achieve progress in further trade liberalization. While this article does not propose either specific predictions or comprehensive solutions to the dilemma of social entropy in the world trading system, it does suggest that a more robust, authoritative and trade-focused WTO is essential to counter the entropic tendencies within the supra-national trading system. This should help to ensure future growth and achieve the fuller distribution of economic prosperity through global trade. (shrink)

This study examines the efficiency of tools for fighting software piracy in the conditional distributions of software piracy. Our paper examines software piracy in 99 countries over the period 1994–2010, using contemporary and non-contemporary quantile regressions. The intuition for modelling distributions contingent on existing levels of software piracy is that the effectiveness of tools against piracy may consistently decrease or increase simultaneously with the increasing levels of software piracy. Hence, blanket policies against software piracy are unlikely to succeed unless they (...) are contingent on initial levels of software piracy and tailored differently across countries with low, medium and high levels of software piracy. Our findings indicate that GDP per capita, research and development expenditure, main intellectual property laws, multilateral treaties, bilateral treaties, World Intellectual Property Organisation treaties, money supply and respect for the rule of law have negative effects on software piracy. Equitably distributed wealth reduces software piracy, and the tendency not to indulge in software piracy because of equitably distributed wealth increases with the increasing software piracy levels. Hence, the negative degree of responsiveness of software piracy to changes in income levels is an increasing function of software piracy. Moreover, the relationships between policy instruments and software piracy display various patterns: U-shape, Kuznets-shape, S-shape and negative thresholds. A negative threshold represents negative estimates with the increasing negative magnitude throughout the conditional distributions of software piracy. We also discuss the policy implications of our study. (shrink)

Gentili’s conceptualization of war as a conflict between states attempted to limit the legitimacy of war to external wars only, thus precluding the legitimacy of civil wars. It reflected both the emergence of sovereign states and the vision of international law as a law among polities rather than individuals. The conceptualization of war as a dispute settlement mechanism among polities rather than a punishment for breach of the law of nations and the idea of the bilateral justice of war (...) humanized the conduct of warfare and the content of peace treaties. The idea of perfect war excluded brigandage, piracy, and civil wars from its purview. Some scholars have suggested that perfect war had a dark side, legitimizing imperial expansion. Others have cautioned that Gentili explicitly opposed imperial expansion rather adopting anti-imperialist stances. This article suggests that these ambivalent readings of the Gentilian oeuvre reflect the ambivalence of the early modern law of nations. Under the early modern law of nations, aggression for the sake of empire was clearly unjust; nonetheless, imperial expansion took place. Whereas ‘a law which many transgress[ed] [wa]s nonetheless a law’, there was a wide divide between theory and practice.1. (shrink)

Indonesia is recognized as a nurse exporting country, with policies that encourage nursing professionals to emigrate abroad. This includes the country’s adoption of international principles attempting to protect Indonesian nurses that emigrate as well as the country’s own participation in a bilateral trade and investment agreement, known as the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement that facilitates Indonesian nurse migration to Japan. Despite the potential trade and employment benefits from sending nurses abroad under the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, Indonesia itself (...) is suffering from a crisis in nursing capacity and ensuring adequate healthcare access for its own populations. This represents a distinct challenge for Indonesia in appropriately balancing domestic health workforce needs, employment, and training opportunities for Indonesian nurses, and the need to acknowledge the rights of nurses to freely migrate abroad. Hence, this article reviews the complex operational and ethical issues associated with Indonesian health worker migration under the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. It also introduces a policy proposal to improve performance of the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement and better align it with international principles focused on equitable health worker migration. (shrink)

The kin selection hypothesis posits that male androphilia (male sexual attraction to adult males) evolved because androphilic males invest more in kin, thereby enhancing inclusive fitness. Increased kin-directed altruism has been repeatedly documented among a population of transgendered androphilic males, but never among androphilic males in other cultures who adopt gender identities as men. Thus, the kin selection hypothesis may be viable if male androphilia was expressed in the transgendered form in the ancestral past. Using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), (...) we examined 46 societies in which male androphilia was expressed in the transgendered form (transgendered societies) and 146 comparison societies (non-transgendered societies). We analyzed SCCS variables pertaining to ancestral sociocultural conditions, access to kin, and societal reactions to homosexuality. Our results show that ancestral sociocultural conditions and bilateral and double descent systems were more common in transgendered than in non-transgendered societies. Across the entire sample, descent systems and residence patterns that would presumably facilitate increased access to kin were associated with the presence of ancestral sociocultural conditions. Among transgendered societies, negative societal attitudes toward homosexuality were unlikely. We conclude that the ancestral human sociocultural environment was likely conducive to the expression of the transgendered form of male androphilia. Descent systems, residence patterns, and societal reactions to homosexuality likely facilitated investments in kin by transgendered males. Given that contemporary transgendered male androphiles appear to exhibit elevated kin-directed altruism, these findings further indicate the viability of the kin selection hypothesis. (shrink)

Since Nietzsche, the term “perspectivism” has been used as the name for an ill-defined epistemological position. Some have tried to find an adequate meaning for the word “perspectivism,” tacitly investing it with a set of different predicates, such as “the dependence of cognition on position,” “pluralism,” “anti-universalism,” “epistemic humility,” etc. This approach is related to two contestable attitudes: the monolateral linguistic paradigm and the metaepistemological position of multiplicity of incompatible epistemological programs. The monolateral linguistic paradigm proceeds from the assumption that (...) there is no obligatory connection between word and meaning. This makes it possible to denote logical content by any possible sign, and to explicate the sign in any number of ways. The metaepistemological position of multiplicity of incompatible epistemological programs encourages the support of artificial antagonism in the theory of cognition and the creation of “new” positions with different denotations. These attitudes can be contrasted with the method of empirical “originalist” analysis within the bilateral paradigm, as well as the theory of one epistemology and universal epistemic language. The content of the term “perspectivism” can be reconstructed by analyzing the original meanings of its individual constituent morphemes and their combination. The extremely precise and empirically provable definition of the word “perspectivism” is “the tendency to act by seeing through something”. This points to the problem of the impossibility of analytically deducing from it “the dependence of cognition on position,” “pluralism,” and other predicates. The same problem of inconsistency between the name of the epistemological position and its content is also encountered, for example, in the literature on relativism. It freely attributes a set of doctrinal beliefs to the term “relativism” without explicit linguistic signification of the predicates and blurs the difference between perspectivism and relativism. This points to the inexpediency of constructing epistemological positions on the basis of words denoting one of all possible interrelated cognitive actions, and the need to rethink epistemological practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 273 my judgment, in the fact that he has limited the historical inquiry to the scholarly study of documents and discussions without showing those cultural, social, psychological, and economic motivations which formed an accompaniment to the individual protagonists of the discussions. The motivation for what a philosopher says is not justified by revealing only his most immediate opponent's name and ideas, but by showing, as Goldmann (La (...) communautd humaine chez Kant, Paris, 1948) and, very briefly, Stark (The Sociology of Knowledge) did, the reason for his thinking and his presuppositional needs. In the case of Kant, it is obvious that we cannot leave out his pietist formation, the fears about the French Revolution and Hume's scepticism. The historicity of a study cannot be limited to the history of polemics or to the discovery of documents which, theoretically, add nothing to what an author has already stated in his works. The vast philological material Pupi has gathered, seems to me very good, and it represents, I think, the greatest value of Pupi's work, because of its usefulness in the field of the sociology of knowledge. And to this field I take the liberty of referring Pupi for an example of a method that is historical and not tautological. ANTONELLA GUARALDI Kant und der Friede. By Wilhelm Miiller. (Diisseldorf: Monitor-Verlag, 1962. Pp. 16.) Perpetual Peace records the noble and humane dream of an old man. Such dreams are not without historical precedent, but rarely have they been invested with the earnestness and the conceptual rigor of a Kant--even of a Kant in his declining years. This short essay is at the very least a minor but noteworthy contribution to political theory. Its main thesis call be simply stated. A truly lasting peace can be achieved only through the agency of a world federation of states operating under moral law. The moral law in question is an extension of the guiding principles of Kant's ethics from the private to the public sphere. It is contrary to the dictates of reason as well as of moral conscience to suppose that political order may be conceived or established apart from or even in opposition to moral law. A state or nation, Kant declares, is a free moral person, possessed of an inviolable integrity, not to be exploited as a thing for purposes of aggrandizement on the part of other states. Were that all that Perpetual Peace contained, the essay would stand as testimony to Kant's political idealism. But he pursues with equal seriousness the question of how such an ideal might be realized in practice. Underlying Kant's federalism is his republicanism, his insistence that the only sound civil constitution is one in which each citizen is free, equal, and fully represented under common law publicly promulgated. It is Kant's contention -perhaps less naive today than it might have seemed earlier in this century--that where the consent of the subjects is required, as it is under a republican form of government, to decide whether or not there shall be war, they may be expected to think twice before bringing such sufferings upon themselves. Further, Kant sees in the ever-tightening and expanding web of international relations a natural deterrent to war, since any war will increasingly involve most if not all of mankind. Both considerations appeal, not to the questionable good will of politicians, but to enlightened self-interest. Finally, Kant lays down a series of "preliminary articles" whose purpose is to specify the conditions without which perpetual peace, as things stand, will not even become a real possibility. Among the principles here formulated are that a peace treaty is invalid if made with secret reservations, that the autonomy and constitutional integrity of independent states must be preserved, that standing armies must gradually be abolished, that national debts shall not be contracted externally, and that in the event of war "dishonorable stratagems" such as assassination, 274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY poisoning, spying, etc., which would render postwar mutual confidence impossible, shall not be countenanced. It is mainly with an eye to these preliminary articles that Professor Wilhelm Miiller argues for Kant's relevance to contemporary... (shrink)

To address the complex challenge of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a pandemic treaty should include mechanisms that 1) equitably address the access gap for antimicrobials, diagnostic technologies, and alternative therapies; 2) equitably conserve antimicrobials to sustain effectiveness and access across time and space; 3) equitably finance the investment, discovery, development, and distribution of new technologies; and 4) equitably finance and establish greater upstream and midstream infection prevention measures globally. Biodiversity, climate, and nuclear governance offer lessons for addressing these challenges.

The rise of “the rest,” especially China, has triggered an inevitable transformation of the so-called liberal international order. Rising powers have started to both challenge and push for the reform of existing multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, and to create new ones, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The United States under the Trump administration, on the other hand, has retreated from the international institutions that the country once led or helped to create, including the (...) Trans-Pacific Partnership ; the Paris Agreement; the Iran nuclear deal; the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ; and the United Nations Human Rights Council. The United States has also paralyzed the ability of the World Trade Organization to settle trade disputes by blocking the appointment of judges to its appellate body. Moreover, in May 2020, President Trump announced his decision to quit the Open Skies Treaty, an arms control regime designed to promote transparency among its members regarding military activities. During the past decade or so, both Russia and the United States have been dismantling multilateral arms control treaties one by one while engaging in new nuclear buildups at home. (shrink)

What are the more significant broad-based needs of animal health programs in developing countries? Essentially they are: health management programs, delivery systems, disease surveillance and monitoring of livestock movements, and improved technologies that are cost-effective and environmentally sound.Responsible program planning elicits important considerations that strengthen final results if integrated early into project design. Examples of these considerations include•the potential for intervention;•producers' requirements for animal health services;•present and future effect(s) of disease;•trends in livestock production and marketing;•affect of improved animal health technology (...) on traditional production practices;•recurrent costs; and•affect of government policies on development and application of the technology.For what reasons do some project activities need to be redirected or continually sustained with donor support? A review of the case studies reveals that five major factors critically impact on project longevity. They are 1) initial expense and recurrent costs, 2) labor required, 3) long-term effectiveness, 4) difficulty in achieving objectives, and 5) government policies or civil strife.The U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded animal health projects for 30 years. Unlike most other bilateral projects, nearly one-third have continued for at least a decade. Given the nature of the biological cycle of livestock, animal health projects and programs require long-term commitments. USAID's investments in animal health projects continue to pay dividends despite continuously changing global political priorities and the redefining of development issues. (shrink)

This book is a selection of papers from a conference which took place at the University of Keele in July 1982. The conference was an extraordinarily enjoyable one, and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking all participants for helping to make it so. The conference was intended to allow scholars working on different aspects of symbolic behaviour to compare findings, to look for common ground, and to identify differences between the various areas. We hope that it was (...) successful in these aims: the assiduous reader may judge for himself. Several themes emerged during the course of the conference. Some of these were: 1. There is a distinction to be made between those symbol systems which attempt, more or less directly, to represent a state of affairs in the world (e. g. language, drawing, map and navigational skill) and those in which the representational function is complemented, if not overshadowed, by properties of the symbol system itself, and the systematic inter-relations that symbols can have to one another (e. g. music, mathematics). The distinction is not absolute, for the nature of all symbolic skills is, in part, a function of the structure of the symbolic system employed. Nonetheless, this distinction helps us to understand some common acquisition difficulties, such as that experienced in mathematics, where mental manipulation of symbols can go awry if a child assumes too close a correspondence between mathematical symbols and the world they represent. 2. (shrink)

The paper suggests a revision of the notion of harmony, a major necessary condition in proof-theoretic semantics for a natural-deduction proof-system to qualify as meaning conferring, when moving to a bilateral proof-system. The latter considers both forces of assertion and denial as primitive, and is applied here to positive logics, lacking negation altogether. It is suggested that in addition to the balance between (positive) introduction and elimination rules traditionally imposed by harmony, a balance should be imposed also on: (i) (...) negative introduction and elimination rules, and (ii) positive and negative introduction rules. The paper suggests a proof-theoretical definition of duality (not referring to truthtables), using which double harmony is defined. The paper proves that in a doubly-harmonious system, the coordination rule, typical to bilateral systems, is admissible. (shrink)

Although symmetry has been discussed in terms of a major law of perceptual organization since the early conceptual efforts of the Gestalt school (Wertheimer, Metzger, Koffka and others), the first quantitative measurements testing for effects of symmetry on processes of Gestalt formation have seen the day only recently. In this study, a psychophysical rating study and a “foreground”-“background” choice response time experiment were run with human observers to test for effects of bilateral symmetry on the perceived strength of figure-ground (...) in triangular Kanizsa configurations. Displays with and without bilateral symmetry, identical physically-specified-to-total contour ratio, and constant local contrast intensity within and across conditions, but variable local contrast polarity and variable orientation in the plane, were presented in a random order to human observers. Configurations with bilateral symmetry produced significantly stronger figure-ground percepts reflected by greater subjective magnitudes and consistently higher percentages of “foreground” judgments accompanied by significantly shorter response times. These effects of symmetry depend neither on the orientation of the axis of symmetry, nor on the contrast polarity of the physical inducers. It is concluded that bilateral symmetry, irrespective of orientation, significantly contributes to the, largely sign-invariant, visual mechanisms of figure-ground segregation that determine the salience of figure-ground in perceptually ambiguous configurations. (shrink)

It is a common charge that treaties, perhaps especially recent treaties relating to economic activity, provide unreasonable restrictions on the sovereignty of the state parties. While this charge has been made most forcefully by smaller states, it is sometimes raised with justification by larger states or state-like bodies such as the E.U. as well. When a tribunal judging a dispute on an economic treaty tells a state that it may no longer make decisions such as to accept or (...) reject genetically modified foods, allow internet gambling, or produce generic drugs for domestic consumption, the citizens of the state may rightfully think they have lost important aspects of sovereignty to bodies that do not have legitimate authority to govern. This, in turn, makes negotiating treaties, despite their obvious value, much harder than it otherwise would be, leading to decreased cooperation and the forgoing of potentially significant gain. In this paper, I argue that by importing certain ideas from contract theory to the interpretation of treaties, these worries may be significantly reduced. Contracts have the seemingly paradoxical ability to increase the autonomy of the signers by allowing them to bind themselves to perform certain future actions. But, the ability of contracts to perform this function would be greatly reduced if the only possible remedy for breach were specific performance. Yet, an analogous approach to treaties is common among many important theorists of international law, who demand the equivalence of specific performance in the case of treaties. I will show how importing ideas from contract law can help ensure that treaties, especially economic treaties, are sovereignty-enhancing for states in a way that is similar to the way that contracts may be autonomy-enhancing for individuals, and will show that importing these elements from contract law will strengthen, not undermine, the legitimacy and fairness of international law. (Please download the full paper from SSRN at the link on this page). (shrink)

Bilateralism is the view that the speech act of denial is as primitive as that of assertion. Bilateralism has proved helpful in providing an intuitive interpretation of formalisms that, prima facie, look counterintuitive, namely, multiple-conclusion sequent calculi. Under this interpretation, a sequent of the form $\Gamma \vdash \Delta$ is regarded as the statement that it is incoherent, according to our conversational norms, to occupy the position of asserting all the sentences in $\Gamma$ and denying all the sentences in $\Delta$. Some (...) have argued, based on this interpretation, that the notion of invalidity is as conceptually primitive and important as the notion of validity: whereas the latter is couched in terms of what positions are incoherent and hence untenable, the former is couched in terms of what positions are coherent and hence tenable. My ultimate goal in this paper is to contest this view. Based on a novel technical account of the two notions—one that I find more accurate than the existing accounts in the literature—I shall argue that the notion of incoherence takes conceptual priority over the notion of coherence. (shrink)

This paper formulates a bilateral account of harmony that is an alternative to one proposed by Francez. It builds on an account of harmony for unilateral logic proposed by Kürbis and the observation that reading the rules for the connectives of bilateral logic bottom up gives the grounds and consequences of formulas with the opposite speech act. I formulate a process I call 'inversion' which allows the determination of assertive elimination rules from assertive introduction rules, and rejective elimination (...) rules from rejective introduction rules, and conversely. It corresponds to Francez's notion of vertical harmony. I also formulate a process I call 'conversion', which allows the determination of rejective introduction rules from assertive elimination rules and conversely, and the determination of assertive introduction rules from rejective elimination rules and conversely. It corresponds to Francez's notion of horizontal harmony. The account has a number of features that distinguish it from Francez's. (shrink)

Researchers, when engaging with Māori communities, are in a process of relationship building and this process can be guided by the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, partnership, participation and protection. The main concerns for many indigenous peoples in research revolve around respect for their indigenous rights, control over research processes and reciprocity within research relationships to ensure that equitable benefits are realised within indigenous groups. Māori have identified similar issues and these concerns can be aligned with the principles of (...) the Treaty of Waitangi. The relevance of the Treaty of Waitangi to research ethics is discussed and this paper suggests a revised interpretation of the treaty principles to incorporate the range of ethical issues that Māori have expressed as important. (shrink)

Bilateral proof systems, which provide rules for both affirming and denying sentences, have been prominent in the development of proof-theoretic semantics for classical logic in recent years. However, such systems provide a substantial amount of freedom in the formulation of the rules, and, as a result, a number of different sets of rules have been put forward as definitive of the meanings of the classical connectives. In this paper, I argue that a single general schema for bilateral proof (...) rules has a reasonable claim to inferentially articulating the core meaning of all of the classical connectives. I propose this schema in the context of a bilateral sequent calculus in which each connective is given exactly two rules: a rule for affirmation and a rule for denial. Positive and negative rules for all of the classical connectives are given by a single rule schema, harmony between these positive and negative rules is established at the schematic level by a pair of elimination theorems, and the truth-conditions for all of the classical connectives are read off at once from the schema itself. (shrink)

We examine the short-term and long-term impact of bilateral agreements on migrant workers’ vulnerability during their employment in Israel. To do so, we developed the Vulnerability Index of Migrant Workers based on five dimensions: poor working conditions, poor living conditions, poor safety conditions, low wages, and dependence on migration costs. We focus on migrant workers arriving in Israel from two different countries, employed in two different sectors of the economy. Data was gathered through a survey conducted among workers arriving (...) from both countries before and after the implementation of the bilateral agreements. The study revealed that after the implementation of bilateral agreements, the working, living and safety conditions of migrant workers remained poor or even worsened. For Thai workers, there was a slight improvement in the working and living conditions in the short term after the bilateral agreement, but they worsened in the long run. The total Index of Vulnerability of both groups showed improvement due to the dramatic decrease in dependence on migration costs, despite the deterioration in some working and living conditions and the reduction in migrant workers’ relative wages. (shrink)

Rumfitt has given two arguments that in unilateralist verificationist theories of meaning, truth collapses into correct assertibility. In the present paper I give similar arguments that show that in unilateral falsificationist theories of meaning, falsehood collapses into correct deniability. According to bilateralism, meanings are determined by assertion and denial conditions, so the question arises whether it succumbs to similar arguments. I show that this is not the case. The final section considers the question whether a principle central to Rumfitt's first (...) argument, ‘It is assertible that if and only if it is assertible that it is assertible that ’, is one that bilateralists can reject, and concludes that they cannot. It follows that the logic of assertibility and deniability, according to a result by Williamson, is the little known modal logic K4 studied by Sobociński. The paper ends with a plaidoyer for bilateralists to adopt this logic. (shrink)

This paper provides a proof-theoretic account of imperative logical consequence by generalising Greg Restall’s multiple conclusion bilateralism for declarative logic. According to imperative bilateralism, a sequent Γ ⊢ Δ is valid iff jointly commanding all the imperatives Φ ∈ Γ and prohibiting all the imperatives Ψ ∈ Δ clashes. This account has three main virtues: (1) it provides a proof-theoretic account of imperatives; (2) it does not rely on the controversial notion of imperative inference; and (3) it is neutral regarding (...) cognitivism about imperatives. (shrink)

Ian Rumfitt (2000) developed a bilateralist account of logic in which the meaning of the connectives is given by conditions on asserted and rejected sentences. An additional set of inference rules, the coordination principles, determines the interaction of assertion and rejection. Fernando Ferreira (2008) found this account defective, as Rumfitt must state the coordination principles for arbitrary complex sentences. Rumfitt (2008) has a reply, but we argue that the problem runs deeper than he acknowledges and is in fact related to (...) the challenge of establishing proof-theoretic harmony. We motivate a distinctively bilateral criterion for harmony and show how the bilateralist can meet it. This also resolves Ferreira's complaint. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic semantics is an inferentialist theory of meaning originally developed in a unilateral framework. Its extension to bilateral systems opens both opportunities and problems. The problems are caused especially by Coordination Principles (a kind of rule that is not present in unilateral systems) and mismatches between rules for assertion and rules for rejection. In this paper, a solution is proposed for two major issues: the availability of a reduction procedure for tonk and the existence of harmonious rules for the (...) paradoxical zero-ary connective $\bullet$. The solution is based on a reinterpretation of bilateral rules as complex rules, that is, rules that introduce or eliminate connectives in a subordinate position. Looking at bilateral rules from this perspective, the problems faced by bilateralism can be seen as special cases of general problems of complex systems, which have been already analyzed in the literature. In the end, a comparison with other proposed solutions underlines the need for further investigation in order to complete the picture of bilateral proof-theoretic semantics. (shrink)