Showing papers on "Settlement (litigation) published in 2016"

The European origins of economic development

Abstract: Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe during colonization had an enduring effect on economic development, researchers have been unable to assess these predictions directly because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. We construct a new database on the European share of the population during colonization and examine its association with economic development today. We find a strong, positive relation between current income per capita and colonial European settlement that is robust to controlling for the current proportion of the population of European descent, as well as many other country characteristics. The results suggest that any adverse effects of extractive institutions associated with small European settlements were, even at low levels of colonial European settlement, more than offset by other things that Europeans brought, such as human capital and technology.

Commonplace diversity: social relations in a super-diverse context

Abstract: The first decades of the twenty-first century have seen increasingly complex patterns of global migration flows and settlement, which Vertovec (2007) has sought to capture in the conceptual descrip...

Recent Trends in Investor–State Dispute Settlement

Abstract: Systematic data about investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) are increasingly important to our understanding of modern relations between states and multinational corporations. This article updates Susan Franck’s ‘Empirically Evaluating Claims about Investment Treaty Arbitration’ (2007) and complements Thomas Schultz and Cedric Dupont’s ‘Investment Arbitration: Promoting the Rule of Law or Over-empowering Investors? A Quantitative Empirical Study’ (2015). I use a political science lens to explore data on the modern incarnation of ISDS, from 1990 to 2014. The article addresses topics including: (i) the industry, nationality and other characteristics of arbitration filers; (ii) win, loss, settlement and annulment rates; and (iii) trends in amounts claimed and amounts awarded. It also serves to introduce the accompanying data set. A central takeaway is that users of the de facto ISDS regime are incredibly diverse. Nonetheless, both proponents and detractors of ISDS may find fodder for their positions in recent developments.

Aid and the Perpetuation of Refugee Camps: The Case of Dadaab in Kenya 1991–2011

Abstract: The refugee complex at Dadaab in North Eastern Kenya was established in the early 1990s. It has become known as the largest refugee settlement in the world since renewed fighting in south and central Somalia in 2006 pushed yet more Somalis into these long-established camps. Marked by problems related to poor living conditions and economic circumstances, camps of this size are very often a source of instability and insecurity, and their management has been widely discussed in the scholarly as well as policy literature. This article examines the role and responsibility of aid organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres in the establishment and perpetuation of camps. When refugee camps become restrictive and repressive, the article asks, are aid agencies necessarily exempt from responsibility? Drawing on the Medecins Sans Frontieres’ archives regarding their Dadaab operations up to 2011 and direct professional experience in this refugee camp, this article illuminates humanitarian complicity in situations of containment and protracted exile, arguing that this can have wider implications for the management of refugee populations all over the world.

The lost norse

Abstract: The Norse lived in Greenland beginning in 985 C.E. and ending around 1450 C.E. But why they disappeared after that, with few clues as to their fate, has remained a mystery since. Now, new archaeological clues are painting a fresh picture of the Norse. Instead of a society focused on dairy farming, and poorly adapted for the Arctic climate, as previously thought, the new findings imply a community centered instead around hunting and trading. Precise new dates of settlement, established from large surveys of archaeological sites, show more centrally planned movement, bolstering the case for a communal hunting effort versus a loose federation of farm stands. Meanwhile, new finds of walrus ivory show that this valuable commodity may have driven the rise and fall of the community.

Measuring the Cost of Privacy: A Look at the Distributional Effects of Private Bargaining

Abstract: Transparency is one of the most contested aspects of international organizations. While observers frequently call for greater oversight of policy making, evidence suggests that settlement between states is more likely when negotiations are conducted behind closed doors. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) legal body provides a useful illustration of these competing perspectives. As in many courts, WTO dispute settlement is designed explicitly to facilitate settlement through private consultations. However, this study argues that the privacy of negotiations creates opportunities for states to strike deals that disadvantage others. Looking at product-level trade flows from all disputes between 1995 and 2011, it finds that private (early) settlements lead to discriminatory trade outcomes – complainant countries gain disproportionately more than the rest of the membership. When the facts of a case are made known through a ruling, these disproportional gains disappear entirely. The article also finds that third-party participation – commonly criticized for making settlement less likely – significantly reduces disparities in post-dispute trade. It then draws parallels to domestic law and concludes with a set of policy prescriptions.

In a state of slum: Governance in an informal urban settlement in Ghana

Abstract: Old Fadama in Accra, Ghana, is a vast informal settlement. A legalistic approach by successive governments has meant a near-absence of statutory institutions and the emergence of alternative public authorities. These endeavour to provide the area with a range of basic public services to solve the area's serious developmental challenges. Through processes of informal negotiation residents establish rights and social contracts that underpin and define what will constitute ideas of state and law. At the same time, self-governance emerges while relations with statutory institutions shift back and forth between vilification, tacit acceptance, and productive cooperation. The article contributes to studies of governance in informal urban settlements on two fronts. First, it shows how informal arrangements lead to the provision of basic public services and influence the workings of formal institutions of government. Second, it challenges facile understandings of large-scale informal settlements as generally chaotic, lawless or subversive.

Recruitment by Petition: American Antislavery, French Protestantism, English Suppression

Abstract: Why do petitions flourish when they are often denied if not ignored by the sovereigns who receive them? When activists seek to build political organizations in network-rich but information-poor environments, petitioning as institutional technology facilitates recruitment. A petition’s signatory list identifies and locates individuals sympathetic to its prayer and expresses to other citizens who and how many agree with the prayer. Three historical moments—the explosion of antislavery petitioning in the antebellum United States, the emergence of Protestantism in sixteenth-century France, and England’s suppression of petitioning after the Restoration Settlement of 1660—provide vivid demonstrations of the theory. A recruitment-based theory implies that petition drives mobilize as much as they express, that well-established groups and parties petition less frequently, and that the most important readers of a petition are those asked to sign it. The petition’s recruitment function complements, but also transforms, its function of messaging the sovereign. Contemporary digital petitioning both routinizes and takes its force from the petition’s embedded recruitment technology.

People and plant interaction at the Houli Culture Yuezhuang site in Shandong Province, China:

Abstract: Palaeoethnobotanical research at the Yuezhuang site, a Houli Culture settlement in Jinan, Shandong Province, China, dating to 8000–7700 cal. BP, documents human–environment interaction and the loca...

Settlement and employment experiences of South Sudanese people from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia

Abstract: This article critically examines the settlement experiences of South Sudanese people from refugee backgrounds living in Melbourne, Australia, with a particular focus on unemployment and barriers to employment. Drawing on extensive primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 South Sudanese Australians, the article demonstrates how unemployment features centrally in participants' narratives and appreciation of their settlement in Australia. Participants relate unemployment to issues such as social isolation, family breakdown, and intergenerational conflict, and foreground discrimination as a key barrier to employment. We reflect on these findings by discussing suggestions for future policy and practice in the area of refugee settlement and employment.

Testing settlement models in the early Roman colonial landscapes of Venusia (291 B.C.), Cosa (273 B.C.) and Aesernia (263 B.C.)

Abstract: This paper examines settlement density and settlement patterns in the Roman colonial territories of Venusia, Cosa and Aesernia, located in three different landscapes of central southern Italy (modern Basilicata, Tuscany and Molise). Using a series of GIS tools, we conducted a comparative analysis of the density and spatial distribution of sites dating to the Hellenistic period (ca. 350–50 b.c.). We used the legacy settlement data collected by previous large-scale, intensive, site-oriented field surveys to test the validity of two competing rural settlement models of early Roman colonization: the conventional model of neatly organized settlements regularly dispersed across the landscape and the recently proposed theory that colonists adopted a polynuclear settlement strategy. After calculating the extent to which the archaeological datasets conform to the regular or polynuclear model, we conclude that only a very small portion of the colonized areas actually meets traditional expectations regarding the organization of early colonial settlements. Our analyses show that the legacy survey data is more consistent with the polynuclear settlement theory, but the data also reveals some completely unexpected patterns, suggesting that early Roman colonial landscapes were more diverse than previously thought.

Locations of labor market entry by German university graduates: is (regional) beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Abstract: We study location choices of German university graduates at labor market entry, relating them to employment opportunities, regional characteristics and graduates’ own geographic roots. About half of the students remain in the university region or return to their home region. In addition, graduates are significantly more likely to move to a region resembling their home region in settlement structure and dialect than to a dissimilar region. This finding, which is robust to controlling for employment opportunities and geographic distance, indicates that graduates prefer employment in regions similar to those where they originally grew up.

Endogenous processes of colonial settlement. the success and failure of european settler farming in sub-saharan africa

Abstract: This paper comments on studies that aim to quantify the long-term economic effects of historical European settlement across the globe. We argue for the need to properly conceptualise «colonial settlement» as an endogenous development process shaped by the interaction between prospective settlers and indigenous peoples. We conduct three comparative case studies in West, East and Southern Africa, showing that the «success» or «failure» of colonial settlement critically depended on colonial government policies arranging European farmer’s access to local land, but above all, local labour resources. These policies were shaped by the clashing interests of African farmers and European planters, in which colonial governments did not necessarily, and certainly not consistently, abide to settler demands, as is often assumed.

A Comprehensive Theory of Civil Settlement

Abstract: A settlement is an agreement between parties to a dispute. In everyday parlance and in academic scholarship, settlement is juxtaposed to trial or some other method of dispute resolution in which a third-party factfinder ultimately picks a winner and announces a score. The “trial versus settlement” trope, however, represents a false choice; viewing settlement solely as a dispute-ending alternative to a costly trial leads to an anemic understanding of how dispute resolution should and often does work. In this article, we describe and defend a much richer concept of settlement, amounting in effect to a continuum of possible agreements between litigants along many dimensions. “Fully” settling a case, of course, appears to completely resolve a dispute, and if parties to a dispute rely entirely on background default rules, a “naked” trial occurs. But in reality virtually every dispute is “partially” settled. The same forces that often lead parties to fully settle—joint value maximization, cost minimization, and risk reduction—will under certain conditions lead them to enter into many other forms of Pareto-improving agreements while continuing to actively litigate against one another. We identify three primary categories of these partial settlements: award-modification agreements, issuemodification agreements, and procedure-modification agreements. We provide real-world examples of each and rigorously link them to the underlying incentives facing litigants. Along the way, we use our analysis to characterize unknown or rarely seen kinds of partial agreements that nevertheless seem to us theoretically attractive, and we allude to potential reasons for their scarcity within the context of our framework. Finally, we study partial settlements and how they interact with each other in real-world adjudication using new and unique data from New York’s summary jury trial program. Patterns in the data are consistent with parties using partial settlement terms both as substitutes and as complements for other terms, depending on the context, and suggest that entering into a partial settlement can reduce the attractiveness of full settlement. We conclude by briefly discussing the distinctive welfare implications of partial settlements.

The Right to Work, and the Right at Work

Abstract: Antiunion right to work (RTW) laws are a distinctive legacy of (trans)formative struggles around the industrial-relations settlement in the United States, and an enduring symbol of its stunted and bifurcated development. The RTW fault line, drawn in the 1940s and 1950s, was for a long time the sharpest spatial indicator of the divide between the union staging grounds of the industrial heartland and the much less organized and characteristically ‘deregulated’ South. After 1958, something like a cold war stalemate prevailed for half a century, however, with only an incremental drift to the RTW side, even as a new pattern of ‘flexible’ growth was incubated in the Sun Belt, as deindustrialization and trade displacement struck the Rust Belt, and as the political climate, post-Reagan, skewed decisively in favor of corporate interests. Nevertheless, the RTW line essentially held, that is, until the abrupt renewal of hostilities after 2008, following a Republican resurgence at the state and local level, c...

Arbitration and Conflict Resolution in Labor- Management Bargaining

Abstract: Compulsory arbitration is frequently employed to resolve labor-management bargaining disputes when the union is legally prohibited (as are, for example, many public employees' unions) from striking. In this form of arbitration, an arbitrator is empowered to impose a settlement on the bargaining parties if their negotiations break down. Various compulsory-arbitration schemes are now in use in many states, including Alaska, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. But there has been little formal analysis of the various schemes that are employed in these states and, as a result, the basis available for choice among them remains incomplete. This paper classifies the theoretical problems that must be resolved before a more careful comparison of these compulsory-arbitration schemes is possible, provides a brief overview of the work that has been done on each of these problems, and indicates what appear to be the most promising directions for future research along these lines. Four kinds of compulsory arbitration are considered here: conventional ccmpulsory arbitration (CCA), in which the arbitrator imposes a settlement of his (unrestricted) choice if negotiations break down; finaloffer arbitration (FOA), in which the arbitrator must choose without compromise between bargainers' final offers if negotiations break down; multiple FOA, a variant of FOA originally suggested by Donn; and, on occasion, issue-by-issue FOA, which is like simple FOA except that the arbitrator is permitted to fashion his settlement from the components of bargainers' final offers. CCA, simple FOA, and issue-by-issue FOA are already in widespread use, while multiple FOA, which is similar but not identical to a scheme used in Eugene, Oregon, has been suggested by Donn and my 1979a article as an improvement on simple FOA. In the literature of industrial labor relations, compulsory-arbitration schemes have been judged primarily by three criteria: the quality of the arbitral settlements they generate when negotiations break down; their freedom from bias, which is usually defined as the distortion of negotiated settlements away from what they would have been in ordinary bargaining, with both strikes and lockouts permitted; and the extent to which they create environments conducive to negotiated settlements. An integrated analysis, in which bargainers choosing their stategies consider the effects of their actions on negotiated and arbitral settlements as well as on the probabilities of these possibilities, would be ideal. But in beginning the study of the effects of arbitration schemes, it is convenient, and probably not misleading, to simplify the problem by dividing it. Thus, I shall propose separate analyses of the quality of arbitral settlements, under noncooperative behavioral assumptions; the bias of negotiated settlements, under cooperative assumptions; and the probability of a negotiated settlement, under a blend of both noncooperative and cooperative assumptions. Each section of this paper in turn discusses existing work that is relevant to judging arbitration schemes by one of the above three criteria. *University of California-San Diego. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation. Many of the observations made here evolved in discussions and correspondence with Clifford Donn, who by no means agrees with all, or even most, of them. I am grateful to him, and to Joel Sobel and participants in a workshop presentation at the University of Chicago, who also made helpful comments.

Locations of labor market entry by German university graduates: is (regional) beauty in the eye of the beholder? [Standortentscheidungen deutscher Hochschulabsolventen beim Berufseinstieg – Liegt (regionale) Schönheit im Auge des Betrachters?]

Abstract: We study location choices of German university graduates at labor market entry, relating them to employment opportunities, regional characteristics and graduates’ own geographic roots. About half of the students remain in the university region or return to their home region. In addition, graduates are significantly more likely to move to a region resembling their home region in settlement structure and dialect than to a dissimilar region. This finding, which is robust to controlling for employment opportunities and geographic distance, indicates that graduates prefer employment in regions similar to those where they originally grew up.

Between Urban and Rural: Sustainability of Small Towns in the Czech Republic

Abstract: The paper analyses the position of small towns in the Czech settlement system. It deals with the definition of small towns, their geographical positions, demographic characteristics and functions in the national settlement system. A typology of small towns aimed at individual pillars of their sustainability is one of the results of the paper. The article discusses the position of small towns as part of the urban world and their position as a part of the countryside. It concludes that small towns are functionally important as rural centres. However, differences between urban and rural seem to be less important than differences among individual types of the Czech countryside (suburban, intermediate, inner periphery, borderland).

Isolation or Integration? A Spatial Analytical Approach to the Local Impact of the Roman Army on the Northern Frontier

Abstract: Author(s): Weaverdyck, Eli James Sheldon | Advisor(s): Norena, Carlos F. | Abstract: This dissertation analyzes changing rural settlement patterns in the Lower Danubian Plain from the Late Iron Age through Late Antiquity in order to elucidate the role played by garrison settlements in the economic strategies of peasants living near the Roman frontier. The military cordon on the northern frontier has been seen both as a stimulus to provincial economic development and as an oppressive burden preventing growth in its vicinity with no consensus forthcoming. I approach the question from the perspective of the rural producers, using the landscapes in which they chose to live as evidence for common goals and conditions. In order to isolate the role of garrison settlements from other features in the landscape, I employ a novel method of comparative multivariate logistic regression analysis. This allows me to test different hypothesized relationships against known settlement patterns while controlling for other influences on location. The result is a quantitative measure of how well each hypothesis fits empirical data.The first chapter reviews the state of the question on Roman peasant economies, frontier economies and the military community. Having concluded that current interpretations based on documentary and artifactual evidence have failed to settle the issue of military-rural relations, I propose the quantitative analysis of archaeological landscapes as a promising way forward. Here, landscape refers to the embodied perception of a meaningful environment. Each settlement anchors the movements of the people who live there, so the locations of ancient settlements, combined with modern topographic and climatological data provide a foundation for the reconstruction of landscapes as experienced by their ancient inhabitants. I finish the chapter by describing a method of comparative modeling using logistic regression analysis for hypothesis testing. The goal of most locational analysis of this sort is a single mathematical model that predicts or explains settlement location using environmental variables. I suggest that multiple models be created using variables that have been constructed according to competing hypotheses and the goodness of fit between each model and known data be compared to the others. The model with the closest fit contains the variable that best reflects ancient reality. In this way, it is possible to assess the empirical support for each hypothesis and to select the best one.The second chapter discusses the Lower Danubian Plain in modern Bulgaria, ancient Moesia Inferior. This frontier zone has not figured prominently in discussions of Roman frontier society. This is unfortunate because the area has a unique history of conquest that sets it apart from other, better-known frontiers: unlike the frontier in Western Europe, it was not heavily garrisoned until relatively late and, after the beginning of the fourth century, it was quite close to the imperial capital at Constantinople. In this chapter, I describe the natural environment of the study area in the middle of the Danubian Plain and the local economy prior to Roman conquest before discussing the history of the area from first century BCE through the sixth century CE. I show that the pre-Roman population of the area, though sparse, was well suited to integration with the Roman military community. I then describe the history of violence in the area and the ways in which different violent episodes impacted the countryside. Next I trace the construction and maintenance of the physical infrastructure of Roman power—forts, cities, and roads—from conquest to collapse before investigating the changing origins of the resident population. I conclude the chapter with an examination of the evidence for the economic status of garrison settlements in Moesia Inferior. In the third chapter, I describe the process of systematizing the diverse and varied record of archaeological research in the study area. The result is a database that includes ancient places of various functions grouped into chronological phases stretching from Pre-Roman to Late Antique. I also describe how I reconstructed archaeological landscapes for each settlement and how these landscapes, grouped chronologically, were analyzed. First, the immediate territories around settlements are compared to territories around random locations to determine if there are factors that are more or less abundant in one group than the other. Then, the accessibility of traffic routes and possible market centers is compared. As a result of this, I show that Roman settlements are located in very different landscapes than either Pre-Roman or Late Antique settlements. There is little consistency in Pre-Roman landscapes, but Roman landscapes are ideal for intensive agricultural production, and Late Antique landscapes offer greater defensive capabilities. I then use logistic regression analysis to create baseline models of settlement location to which I add Market Potential variables to test the various hypotheses on which they were constructed. The primary result is that settlements from the Middle Roman period (second to third centuries CE), avoid forts and cluster around non-military centers.In the final chapter, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative landscape analysis and comparative modeling before assessing the impact of these results on our understanding of the local economy and the role of garrison settlements in both central Moesia Inferior and the Empire in general. I end by outlining next steps, both for improving the methodology and expanding the scope of investigation.This dissertation reaches the following main conclusions: 1) Settlement-centered landscapes contain valuable evidence for the behavior of people who are not well-represented by traditional archaeological and historical evidence. 2) While no clear tendencies emerge from the Pre-Roman settlement pattern, Roman settlements show a strong preference for landscapes best suited to intensive agricultural production. In contrast, after the late fourth century, rural settlements prefer locations with access to defensible refuges, demonstrating the value of the security previously provided by the Empire. 3) The rural economy of central Moesia Inferior flourished during the Roman period so military demand did not depress the local economy. 4) At the same time, peasants in this particular frontier zone were not using garrison settlements as frequent markets for their produce. They may have supplied the frontier indirectly or infrequently, but most would have had few opportunities to visit the army bases themselves. This means that peasants were not in a position to exploit soldiers’ demand for local produce to supplement their rations. 5) Nothing in the material or literary record would have suggested that the military communities were isolated in this way, so further investigation along these lines in other frontier zones is warranted.

Natural resources, state formation and the institutions of settler capitalism: the case of Western Canada, 1850-1914

Abstract: A renewed discussion about inequality and economic divergence between countries has re-introduced the debate about the role played by natural resources, geography and the institutions of settler capitalism as promoters of growth and development in the long-term. Countries like Canada, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, among others, expanded their frontiers of settlement, created important infrastructural transformations, received millions of immigrants and capital and became the most important producers of natural resources for exports during the first era of globalization (c. 1850-1914). Comparative studies that study these countries’ development have particularly praised the democratic distribution of land in small lots, like in the United States and Canada, which created a class of successful farmers. With the help of Geographic Information system (GIS), this dissertation revisits the political economy of Western Canada settlement by using a historical economic geography approach. Previous investigations on Western Canada settlement used decennial census records to estimate where settlers established themselves. This method is problematic as the expansion of the frontier of settlement happened on a very dynamic period where settlers moved frequently from one region to another. The use of annual postal records, instead, provides a more complete understanding of the region. As postal facilities opened where immigrants had already established themselves, the location of post offices gives a more nuanced understanding of the evolution of the frontier of settlement. This study reconstructed the historical postal and railroad networks that revealed an uneven pattern of settlement with more details. Similarly, by analyzing updated homesteads entries and cancellations data during the period, this dissertation found that farmers’ failures were more frequent than the classical literature assumed, particularly after the 1890s, a period scholars regarded as one of more stable settlement. The production of space and the formation of the institutions in Western Canada from the 1850s to 1914 shows the dynamic of capitalist expansion and natural resources exploitation in a new territory. The location of post offices helps to understand in a granular form the uneven development of regions and the emergence of small communities that later became nodes of an important railroad network.

Undefeated Ambition in an Unsympathetic Empire: the Kat River Settlement in the Cape Colony, 1853-1872

Abstract: The Kat River Settlement, established in South Africa’s eastern Cape in 1829, became a place where Khoesan Christians built an independent outpost of respectable colonial society. The Settlement lost official and missionary support after the residents’ rebellion of 1850-53, and scholars treat this episode as the end of the Kat River project. But this diminution of outside support did not cause Kat River residents to relinquish their aspirations. In the two decades after the rebellion, they responded to bleak economic prospects and supporters’ apathy by using church institutions to claim equality with British congregations, protect their economic interests, pursue education, and incorporate new communities into the Kat River project. These efforts reveal how Khoesan people combatted their disadvantages in a colonial state and participated in imperial networks of Christianity. Examining Kat River after 1853 demonstrates how the Settlement’s ideals endured and continue to inform contemporary Coloured cultural politics.

Learning from the Battlefield: Information, Domestic Politics, and Interstate War Duration

Abstract: What drives leaders’ decisions about whether to continue or end an ongoing war? The private information explanation for war holds that leaders fight because they believe that doing so will advance national interests, and they settle hostilities when new information reduces their optimism about the possibility of long-term success. Yet significant theoretical disagreement exists about both the extent to which and the manner in which new information, especially battlefield information, promotes settlement. This article unpacks the logic of the informational mechanism, arguing that settlement will be more likely when there has been more extensive fighting and that countries are more likely to make concessions to end wars when battlefield results have deteriorated; short-term spikes in war intensity by contrast do not promote settlement. Moreover, building on work on leadership turnover and settlement, I show that leader replacement is sometimes part of the information-updating process, especially in autocracies: new leaders without political ties to the person in power at the start of the war are more likely both to come to power when war is going poorly and to end wars once in office. Tests of these arguments make use of new participant-level data on the timing of battle deaths for all Correlates of War interstate wars, which allows me to examine the effects of changing battlefield developments across a wide range of cases in a manner that was previously impossible.