Volume 9, Issue 1 -

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is characterized by rapid changes in technology. The innovation in the ICT has shown its benefits in not only facilitating better communications, but also in fostering development. Therefore, ensuring proper incentives to the private sector for innovation or diffusion of technology is crucial. However, incentivizing the private players may be challenging in developing countries, where majority of the population requires cheap access. Thus, this paper analyses the extent to which developing countries can ensure incentivizing the providers of technology, without failing on their commitment to provide cheap access to the poor. The paper analyses Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) and Universal Service Obligation (USO) and suggests ways to ensure adequate investment without jeopardizing access. The framework chosen in this paper is to see the changing treatment of LLU and USO in mature jurisdictions, and then analyze the viability of these policies in the socio-economic settings of developing countries. The framework also takes note of changes in the ICT technology.

The article analyzes the history of mining in Colombia from an institutional perspective. Since colonial times the official order established formal institutions to govern the mining resources, institutions that, for the most part, created an exclusive and extractive system that became a historical constant. However, local agents did not passively receive those official institutions and in consequence have established parallel systems of management of mining resources based on community authorities and experiences. Therefore, the history of mining activity in Colombia has been the one created by the interaction and collision of those different legal orders. The interaction of those legal orders have been particularly tense in the last couple of decades due to the increased pressure that local territories are experiencing, a socio-economic dynamic that has triggered a complex socio-environmental conflict that is defining not only the areas in which mining is taking place, but also rural areas in general. The official legal system lacks the categories to solve the conflicts and to understand the regulatory complexity that characterizes those resource rich areas. In consequence, the article closes with a call to explore legal pluralism as an alternative framework capable of decoding the regulatory diversity seen in Colombian mining areas, as well as a first step to start organizing the multiple legal orders operating on the ground in these complex social areas.

Regionalism has been conceptualised as a development strategy for integrating developing countries into the global economy, and there has been an increase in the number of North-South regional trade agreements (RTAs) being negotiated among WTO Members. Notified under Article XXIV GATT 1994, members of North-South RTAs must liberalize substantially all trade on a reciprocal basis, within a reasonable period of time, irrespective of their development status. Challenging the assumptions on which North-South regionalism rests, this article submits that Article XXIV has created a regulatory framework that sustains a monocultural conception of development which is synonymous with economic growth. Rejecting the economic model, this article argues that development should be understood as a multidimensional process, with an emphasis on equality of opportunities for all countries. Through a deconstruction of the textual interpretation of Article XXIV, and by analysing the practical application of this provision in the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements, the gradual erosion of development from the process of trade liberalisation will be revealed. This article argues that the “rationalizing spell” of legal formalism must be broken in order to reimagine the legal framework, so that a concept of development, grounded in equality, is facilitated by the multilateral trading system.

This study aims to analyze, from a legal perspective, the public policies of science, technology and innovation offered by the Brazilian government, more specifically, the Brazilian Innovation Act (Lei de Inovação), in order to verify the reasons behind the mismatch between innovation efforts and its results in the economy. We seek to answer, preliminarily, the following questions: (a) What is innovation? (b) Should the state act in the innovation process? (c) What is the relationship between law and innovation policies? (d) Why is there a mismatch between what innovation efforts propose and what we can see in reality? Given these considerations, it becomes possible to answer the central issue of this study: Why is there a mismatch between what the Innovation Act proposes and what we can see as results? The issue was analyzed based on the premise that innovation nowadays is essential to society’s development and economy. We concluded that Brazil presents advances in this sector and most of the public policies managed to have efficacy for entrepreneurs, but institutional changes in the process of receiving these incentives and in its supervision are also necessary, such as a better articulation and coordination between entities responsible for its implementation and a better evaluation of public policies, improving them, so that companies may have the same competitivity of foreign companies. Although Brazil’s innovation rates are declining, the use of instruments of state support for innovation is being increasingly adopted, showing that even in adverse situations, they can be seen as advances.

This article assesses the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in meeting its twin aims of emission reductions and sustainable development. To date, the CDM has failed to achieve these goals. This article argues that the CDM’s shortcomings are due to path dependence, with the CDM stuck at a suboptimal equilibrium of insufficient institutions, capital and leadership. A reform scheme involving foreign direct investment, foreign aid and CDM amendments is prescribed for pushing the CDM to a more efficient and prosperous path. A properly functioning CDM would afford both developed and developing countries the opportunity to secure a more sustainable economic and environmental future.

Prominent socio-legal scholars have criticized the World Bank’s Doing Business Project on the grounds that development aid donors improperly condition aid on compliance with Doing Business norms. This paper provides the first empirical test of that thesis. I examine nearly a decade of development assistance to analyze whether developing countries that implement more Doing Business reforms indeed tend to receive more development aid. I find mixed support for the conditionality thesis. While aid from multilateral organizations and from the World Bank’s International Development Assistance (IDA) program are correlated with reform efforts, total aid, as well as aid from rich countries, is not.

Transparency and accountability are key concepts of good governance that are repeatedly demonstrated to have the capacity to translate natural resources wealth to sustainable development of economies. These concepts are particularly important to countries rich in natural resources and Nigeria is one of such countries. Evidence however suggests that Nigeria is not benefiting from the gains expected from its natural resources despite policies and legislations like the NEITI Act 2007 which are aimed at promoting sustainable development through transparency and accountability. Various attempts at theorizing the reasons behind these apparent failures have tended to blame external factors. These external factors are sometimes disguised under the omnibus descriptions of resource curse phenomenon and corruption. This paper argues that although these factors may be contributing to the continued failures of several development initiatives, there may be need to ensure that the legal frameworks and instruments developed to achieve these objectives are not in themselves faulty. The article posits that the internal normative incoherence in some of these laws creates the room for continued failures despite the best of intentions and interests. To demonstrate this argument, the paper through normative analysis, examines the NEITI Act 2007 in relation to its key transparency and accountability provisions.