Trade, Investment, and Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Engaging with the World (Orientations in Development)

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Trade, Investment, and Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Engaging with the World describes why expanding trade and investment is vital for this region. The greatest economic challenge is to create enough jobs for its rapidly growing labor force, which is increasingly young and educated, to ward off threats to social and political stability inherent in high unemployment rates. This effort requires higher, and more sustainable, economic growth than has been achieved in the past two decades. Expanding trade and private investment offers the best hope. The potential is enormous given the region's human resources, skills, location, history, and opportunities.

The book analyzes why the region has yet to tap fully into the rich stream of global commerce and investment--and the measures needed to do so, including improvements in the domestic investment climate and reforms in the policies of the region's trading partners. Its findings will appeal to policymakers in the region, the private sector and civil society, trade specialists, donors and partners, and anyone with an interest in the history and prospects of the Middle East and North Africa.

This book is part of a series, the MENA Development Reports, prepared on the occasion of the 2003 World Bank-International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The series examines topics of importance to the Middle East and North Africa region: trade and investment, governance, gender, and employment. It aims to provide a comprehensive review of the challenges and opportunities the region faces as it strives to fashion a new development strategy to meet the evolving needs of its people.

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While much fundamental research in the recent past has been devoted to the criminal jury in England to 1800, there has been little work on the nineteenth century, and on the civil jury . This important study fills these obvious gaps in the literature. It also provides a re-assessment of standard issues such as jury lenity or equity, while raising questions about orthodoxies concerning the relationship of the jury to the development of laws of evidence. Moreover, re-assessment of the jury in nineteenth-century England these obvious gaps in the literature. It also provides a re-assessment of standard issues such as jury lenity or equity, while raising questions about orthodoxies concerning the relationship of the jury to the development of laws of evidence. Moreover, re-assessment of the jury in nineteenth-century England or equity, while raising questions about orthodoxies concerning the relationship of the jury to the development of laws of evidence. Moreover, re-assessment of the jury in nineteenth-century England rejects the thesis that juries were squeezed out by judges in favour of market principles. The book contributes a rounded picture of the jury as an institution, considering it in comparison to other modes of fact-finding, its development in both civil and criminal cases, and the significance, both practical and ideological, of its transplantation to North America and Scotland, while opening up new areas of investigation and research.

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A Natural History of the Common Law
S. F. C. Milsom
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0231129947

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How does law come to be stated as substantive rules, and then how does it change? In this collection of discussions from the James S. Carpentier Lectures in legal history and criticism, one of Britain's most acclaimed legal historians S. F. C. Milsom focuses on the development of English common law -- the intellectually coherent system of substantive rules that courts bring to bear on the particular facts of individual cases -- from which American law was to grow. Milsom discusses the differences between the development of land law and that of other kinds of law and, in the latter case, how procedural changes allowed substantive rules first to be stated and then to be circumvented. He examines the invisibility of early legal change and how adjustment to conditions was hidden behind such things as the changing meaning of words.

Milsom points out that legal history may be more prone than other kinds of history to serious anachronism. Nobody ever states his assumptions, and a legal writer, addressing his contemporaries, never provided a glossary to warn future historians against attributing their own meanings to his words and therefore their own assumptions to his world. Formal continuity has enabled nineteenth-century assumptions to be carried back, in some respects as far back as the twelfth century. This book brings together Milsom's efforts to understand the uncomfortable changes that lie beneath that comforting formal surface. Those changes were too large to have been intended by anyone at the time and too slow to be perceived by historians working within the short periods now imposed by historical convention. The law was made not by great men making great decisions but by man-sized men unconcerned with the future and thinking only about their own immediate everyday difficulties. King Henry II, for example, did not intend the changes attributed to him in either land law or criminal law; the draftsman of De Donis did not mean to create the entail; nobody ever dreamed up a fiction with intent to change the law.

Common Lands and Customary Law: Institutional Change in North India over the Past Two Centuries

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Common Lands and Customary Law: Institutional Change in North India over the Past Two Centuries
Minoti Chakravarty-Kaul
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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In 1978 villagers in Kanjhawala agitated against the partition and parcelling of their common lands among the landless by the Delhi administration. Common Lands and Customary Law delves into the past to dispel the negative images of this rural protest built up by the media and by the authorities. The author argues that communally held resources are not necessarily open to misuse and private exploitation, and that the "tragedy of the commons" is not inevitable. For this purpose she examines hundreds of court disputes in greater Punjab, an area which includes present-day Pakistan, over the past two centuries. These court disputes highlight the role of customary law and institutions of property rights devised by rural communities to induce cooperation among individuals and to discourage free-riding or cheating in the use of resources held in common. This book will interest environmental, agrarian and economic historians, and development economists. Minoti Kaul's conclusions about the role of customary law in the governing of common property resources will be of significance to policy-makers and non-governmental organizations working in the fields of environmental and rural development.

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A Natural History of the Common Law
S. F. C. (Author) Milsom
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPACRC

Book Description

The global pipe market is currently estimated at &dollar;9 billion per annum. Composite pipes have a very small share of this important industrial market. However FRP pipe offers significant advantages for drinking water and sewage services in both developed and emerging countries.

These advantages are set to fuel accelerated growth in the use of composite pipe over traditional materials. FRP Pipes and Vessels - a Survey of European Markets and Suppliers presents an in-depth appraisal of these advantages. The study includes the latest and most detailed profiles of FRP pipe suppliers ever undertaken, based on extensive primary research by the author.

Customer Reviews:

A neat overview.......2002-03-06

A neat overview of an inspiring life. Unfortunately, although the book read well, it felt somewhat unsubstantial in relation to the man himself. I could not pin-point exactly what left me with this impression as the author seems to touch on all bases. Perhaps it was a result of the extent of my own admiration for Bohm, but I think it also has to do with the depth and breath of his life and work. As a man and a thinker Bohm seemed to give so much- what a huge task it is to attempt to give some back! A previous interest in Bohm places this particular view within a greater whole, in which case I would recommend this book.

Bohm deserved better.......2000-09-29

I can say, without question, that Peat's biography is a disappointment. The book's only redeeming characteristic is that Peat makes ample use of interviews that would otherwise be unavailable or nonexistent. In other areas, however, Bohm is not well represented. Peat uses information obtained from Russell Olwell concerning Bohm's case before HUAC. Unfortunately, Peat corrupted much of Olwell's work and presented an inaccurate picture of Bohm's case. Further, Peat fails to fully explore the impact of Bohm's work in the foundation of quantum physics and his alternative interpretation. In his review of the book Dr. James Cushing wrote that Bohm deserved better. Sadly, Dr. Cushing is correct.

A strangely moving man.......1999-08-20

This book illuminates the life of David Bohm as both man and scientist--who was nothing at all like I imagined. I knew of Bohm chiefly through the reputation of "Wholeness & the Implicate Order" among New-Age/Fringe Science circles, and through his collaboration with J. Krishnamurti (the darling Theosophical saint, of lately tarnished reputation.) Here, we see Bohm *exactly* as depicted on the cover, wrinkles in high relief and all. Betrayed by squealing Oppenheimer, mentor to famous Feynmann, dumped by Jiddhu Krishnamurti, he was stripped of his citizenship and lived a sorrowful life, despondent & frequently bitter that he had not been given a fair chance to realize his true potential, his scientific contributions not properly acknowledged. He clung to his materialist Marxist philosophy throughout his life; indeed, his Communist connections partially explain (along with Oppenheimer's "tissue of lies") his citizenship problems. Most importantly for would-be devotees, Bohm's life-long devotion to Marxist dogma strongly influenced his materialist interpretation of quantum mechanics and should give pause to those attracted to the "Implicate Order" as somehow acknowledging consciousness in science and the universe. All in all, a good biography of a strangely moving man

Excellent summary of Bohm's perspective on life and physics.......1999-04-28

This is an excellent account of David Bohm, his work and his philosophy. It details his encounters with some of the leading thinkers of his day, including Albert Einstein, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Richard Feynman. Bohm's treatment of his theory of the explicate order and implicate order is described in a very eloquent way by the author. It also addresses how David Bohm was one of those super intellectuals whom the United States had difficulty in accepting and how he "lost" his citizenship over his beliefs. It is a book that is worthwhile reading!

Always Searching.......1999-04-20

I enjoyed this book very much. Bohm was always searching for truth, recognizing that the search never ends but can only become more fruitful. I enjoyed the author's writing style and his brief summaries of the theoretical physics involved. Bohm did not restrict himself to physics, but delved into philosophy as well. He had the courage to change over time.

Infinite Potential: the Life and Times of David Bohm

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Infinite Potential: the Life and Times of David Bohm
F. David Peat
Manufacturer: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OONDHO

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Infinite Potential The Life and Times of David Bohm
F. David Peat
Manufacturer: Perseus Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOMYWO

Book Description

Between 327 and 70 B.C. the Romans expanded their empire throughout the Mediterranean world. This highly original study looks at Roman attitudes and behavior that lay behind their quest for power. How did Romans respond to warfare, year after year? How important were the material gains of
military success--land, slaves, and other riches--commonly supposed to have been merely an incidental result? What value is there in the claim of the contemporary historian Polybius that the Romans were driven by a greater and greater ambition to expand their empire? The author answers these
questions within an analytic framework, and comes to an interpretation of Roman imperialism that differs sharply from the conventional ones.

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The economic motivation of Roman imperialism during the Republic.......2006-06-08

I can't believe that I'm the first person to review this remarkable, classic work on war and the Roman Republic. William Harris offers a comprehensive and credible argument against the conventional academic perspective that Roman expansion was motivated predominantly by the quest for external security. That thesis, which was largely presented by the ancient authors, such as Polybius, and reinforced by modern scholars, such as Ernst Badian, argues that Rome expanded its borders throughout the Mediterranean in the last three centuries before the Common Era primarily to mitigate border threats. The lure of plunder or economic expansion had little to nothing to do with the incessant warfare the Republic engaged in, according to this theory.

"War and Imperialism in Republican Rome" is a learned assault on that argument; with Harris taking the stance that greed and economic exploitation were actually the driving forces behind Roman conquest.

Harris claims that previous assertions about the absence of economic motivations to Roman foreign and military conduct are completely without validity. He does note that there is very scant reference to economic motivation in the classical works, but he explains that away with two arguments: 1) the economic motive was discussed in private, never in an open forum; and 2) many of the writers, like Polybius, are unabashedly pro-Roman and subscribed more moral motivations to their actions.

Harris claims that plunder of neighboring territories was a regular form of Roman behavior and under Roman financial control during the period 327-220BC. The acquisition of slaves had a direct, material impact on the local Roman economy, according to the author and he cites the nine new temples built between 302 and 291 as evidence of the financial impact of plunder.

The acquisition of new land was an even stronger motivation for Roman imperialism during this period before a money-based economy was established in Italy. And it is this lack of money that Harris says explains why the Romans exacted no tribute and generally took a hand-off approach to administration, which Badian and others have used to show that economic exploitation wasn't the driving force behind expansion. Harris claims that if the Romans would have extracted tribute if the could, and as it was they were maximizing their gains from the new territory. (This argument for the lack of imperial organization falls a bit short, in my opinion; innovative organizations and triumph over obstacles was a Roman specialty, not a handicap.)

Although Harris bucks tradition in maintaining that the Romans systematically plundered the new territories between 327-220 to the benefit of the state and thus an economic motive was present from at least the mid-republic, he sides with the conventional wisdom in believing that modern concepts of mercantilism had little to nothing to do with it. Thus, he claims the economic ambitions of the aristocracy was limited to land and plunder (such as slaves) and didn't include trade or natural resources. From time to time the Senate was willing to help a group of merchants, but overall that concern did not drive policy, he says.

In investigating the motives of imperialism from an economic perspective, Harris addresses three different actors or beneficiaries: the state; the senators; and the common man.

First, he considers the state. Harris rejects claims made by Badian and others that the empire was largely a "loss leader" before the acquisition of Asia in the first century. He claims that more than just Sicily served as profit centers, and cites Spain with its rich mines and indemnity payments as an example. The major increases in public works beginning in 183 BC he attributes to an increase in imperial revenues, which also eradicated the heavy debt of the Second Punic War. He also mentions the public subsidies on grain in the years around 200 as an example of the economic and political interests of the state coincided nicely. Harris doesn't explain sufficiently why people refrained from cashing in on Cyrene and Egypt but overall believes that imperial revenue was sought. He directly rejects Badian's argument that Rome collected revenues in the provinces out of inertia.

Second, Harris considers the senators. Overall, the senators' self-restraint in the second century was famous according to Harris. But as the cost and competition for office increased so did the desire to profit from empire. In the past the aristocrats, like everyone else, derived wealth from the empire in the form of plunder on campaigns. Harris claims during this "plunder stage" aristocrats had to maintain a delicate balance between self-restraint and self-promotion of that self-restraint. By 146 BC, however, all this changed as the possibility of peaceful enrichment in the provinces offered a highly attractive alternative to vicious plunder. Even still, large and palpable expressions of avarice were frowned upon and the Lex Claudia had a moderating effect on the behavior of provincial governors. But, Harris argues, the aristocrats could benefit economically from the empire in ways that were less direct. One major source of economic motivation, he claims, was slave supply. The huge slave market in the Mediterranean region needed to work the aristocratic estates or mines was big business. Harris states that Rome took slaves on such a scale that it approaches the Spartan/Helot relationship (my opinion anyway). Indeed, he claims that this drive for slaves is the explanation offered up by Marxist historians. Although Harris highlights slaves and the slave trade as providing a fundamental influence on Roman policy of expansion, he doesn't give it the central importance the Marxists do. Also, Harris and Badian clash over the significance on the ban to grow vines in Transalpine Gaul in 154. For Harris this is a clear example of the economic interests of the wealthy aristocratic land owners (who needed the slaves) influencing Roman foreign policy to their benefit. But, Harris does acknowledge that certain limits were put on the ability of the aristocrats to profit from the empire. Two notable examples are the well-known prohibition on senators from engaging in business concerning public contracts and provincial governors were prohibited from purchasing slaves in their home province. In concluding on the economic benefits in motivating senators, Harris states private gains were clearly sought out and weren't merely incidental side effects of military victory. This holds for both the individual senator and the state as a whole. Just because the ancient authors dismiss such economic motivation doesn't mean it didn't exist, according to Harris. The fact is, he says, economic benefits of empire were widely known and understood fact of the imperial system and simply wasn't debated openly. In sum, economic gain was "a factor of the greatest importance in predisposing senators to take aggressive and interventionist decisions in foreign policy, and sometimes it had a direct effect."

Third, Harris addresses the people of Rome. Harris again clashes with Badian here, arguing that the publicani benefited tremendously from the expanding empire and used their clout to push along expansion in Asia, where profit beckoned. Although, according to Harris, the efforts of politically powerful publicani met with success in getting the free harbor at Delos in 165 and the destruction of Corinth in 146, overall their influence in shaping external policy was minimal. More than anything, they capitalized on the expanding opportunities, rather than actively lobbying for them. Thus, Harris, in the end, agrees with Badian that the Senate held control of foreign policy firmly, although publicani influence probably grew after they were put in the juries in the 140s.

As far as the average man is concerned, Harris attributes some of the difficulties in raising troops for campaigns in the second century as proof that citizens were growing disgruntled with the blatant profit seeking of military expeditions. However, they were always interested in signing up for campaigns that offered riches for the average soldier. But, in the end, Harris concludes that popular clamoring for more territory or opportunities for plunder had little if any effect in hastening expansion.

This is an impressive piece of scholarship, skillfully presented. No serious student of the Roman Republic should be without it.

War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327-70 B.C.

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War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327-70 B.C.
William V. Harris
Manufacturer: Clarendon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K176S8

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