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The papers presented at the conference cut across five thematic areas, including Democracy and Dialogue Engagements in Africa, Historical Perspectives of Democracy and Dialogue in Africa, Biblical Hermeneutics of Dialogue in Africa, Youth Participation in Dialogue and Democracy in Africa, and Indigenous Perspectives on Dialogue and Peace in Africa. The nexus between religion and democracy has hardly been adequately explored. This conference was one of the high points of Dr. Effiong Udo's sabbatical research initiative with the Dialogue Institute (D.I.). [Extracted from the article]

This paper takes a close look at some of the main tenets set out in the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform's Green Paper on Land Reform of 2011, specifically those that have a bearing on the creation of a new framework for land law. The purpose is to advance some suggestions as to how new statutory interventions can avoid being contested for unconstitutionality. The analysis focuses on the Green Paper's notion of land as a "national asset", questioning the meaning and implications of such a notion against the debate about nationalisation of important resources. In this context, the paper is critical of the perceived tendency to introduce reforms for the mere sake of political expediency. The guidelines for state interventions with property rights that would pass constitutional muster are deduced from (mainly) the decision of First National Bank of SA Ltd t/a Wesbank v Commissioner, South African Revenue Service; First National Bank of SA Ltd t/a Wesbank v Minister of Finance 2002 4 SA 768 (CC).

Property rights granted by land and water policies are not always identical with the claims – meaning perceived rights - people base their actions on. A high discrepancy between both resembles an ineffective policy implementation and bears the risk of unsustainable decision-making. Furthermore, perceived rights to land and its corresponding resource water can vary significantly. In this paper, we operationalize the property rights concepts and empirically assess, by specifying and quantifying, the difference between property rights and farmers’ customary claims to both, land and water resources. With regard to land, actors tend to base their decisions on customary claims, and override property rights. In contrast, regarding water, we find that the full benefits of property rights granted by a policy reform are often not recognized. Whereas in the first case political control and monitoring mechanisms seems to fail, in the latter a lack of information sharing let the farmers not exploit their full investment potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the quality of institutions influences the strategic choice of agents in the pulp and paper production system based on the forest plantation sector. In order to proceed with the study, we employ the Economic Analysis of Property Rights (Barzel, 1982, 1989, 2002) as foundation, and test the proposition: in federative states where the institutional environment is fragile and therefore the State has a high cost to enforce property rights, private mechanisms stand out in the protection of property rights. According to Dixit (2009, p. 8), "if the government does not pro tect property rights, at least not as well as owners require, many private arrangements arise to satisfy the owners' needs". The analysis of three business cases of companies with plantations in more than one federative unit revealed the broad range of private mechanisms in place to cope with insecure land rights. In addition to countrywide strategies, in the federative units where government fails to be a good property rights steward, we found geographically specific initiatives being used. Another finding was the identification of variables that are able to evaluate the quality of institutions and employed in the companies' decision-making process for the selection of land rights protection strategies. Findings altogether are empirical evidence of how the quality of institutions influences the strategic choice of land rights protection in the forest plantation sector in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the regulation of three dimensional (3-D) printed weapons. Topics discussed include the ability of the 3-D printer to turn digital files into a physical reality, the primary concern on intellectual property rights, and the inherent flaws in the regulation of manufacture or possession of 3-D printed firearms.

Innovating science- and technology-based firms often endure a sustained period of uncertain intellectual property rights (IPR) protection before patents could be granted to their valuable knowledge assets. This problem is exacerbated, as firms increasingly develop their innovations or operate in countries with weak IPR institutional environments. But how does IPR uncertainty affect firms' strategy toward knowledge appropriation--capturing of economic value from their knowledge assets--and toward providing access to these knowledge assets? Drawing on research from the economics of science and intellectual property strategy, we examine this question using a novel panel data covering 362 firms and organizations in the knowledge-intensive genomics industry based on all genomics patents and matching papers from 1988 to 2005. We find that under uncertain IPR conditions, firms reveal and accumulate more knowledge through open science (follow-on publishing) but shift to knowledge appropriation through commercial science (follow-on patenting) when IPR uncertainty is narrowed. This effect is most salient when firms develop their knowledge assets or operate under strong IPR institutional regime. For highly science-based knowledge assets, firms continue tapping into open science for access and reciprocity in knowledge acquisition from the scientific community. These findings highlight the role of patent grant as a potential lever to shape firms' knowledge processes and long-term innovative capacity, and the emergence of a concerted "science strategy" employed by firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on gender and the commodification of land highlight the loss of land rights, intensification of demands on women's labour, and decline in their decision-making control. Supported by 'extra-economic forces' of religious nationalism (Hindutva), such neoliberal interventions are producing new gender ideologies involving a subtle shift from relations of reciprocity to those of subordination. Using data from fine-grained fieldwork in Koraput district, Odisha, we analyse the tensions and transformations created jointly by corporate interventions (contract farming of eucalyptus by the paper industry) and religious nationalism in the local landscape. We examine how these phenomena are reshaping relations of asymmetric mutuality between nature and society, and between men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) being recognized in Ghana for decades as a legitimate livelihood source for rural folks, over 85% of ASM operations are carried out informally and outside state regulation due to limited understanding of the sector's complex local dynamics in policy and literature. This therefore presents various environmental challenges. This paper explores local perspectives on why miners continue to operate 'illegally' inspite of existing formalization efforts by the state. The study uses a qualitative exploratory design that includes case studies and semi-structured interviews in selected mining communities and core mining regulatory institutions in Ghana to collect primary and secondary data. The findings reveal a lack of understanding of the multifaceted nature of the sector's activities in policy on two interrelated fronts. First, there is little interconnection between formal policy efforts and pre-existing resource norms particularly regarding customary land systems. Second, findings further reveal a generic ASM formalization framework that fails to bring diverse forms of ASM operations under appropriate forms of control, undermining the capacity of some of the sector's operators to comply with formal regulations. It is recommended that policy makers use a more bottom-up approach to ASM formalization in order to gain adequate and accurate understanding of these local level dynamics in policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports analysis of the contents of more than 700 papers published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Rights during 1996-2014 to understand the knowledge structure in the field of IPR. The contents of all the titles are classified into different subject fields related to IPR with the help of title or keywords or abstract of each paper. The analysis indicates that the journal covers almost all the areas specified under Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) as well as the contributions from all over world. It is also reflected that the utility of IPR and the interest of people in this area have increased for better and efficient protection of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current situation of South Korean democracy displays severe partisan conflicts between two major factions around political reformation of the judiciary department and the ensuing social issues of justice and fairness. In this light, this article examines the problematic relationship of democracy, faction and diversity revealed in The Federalist Papers. I argue that Publius' thinking in The Federalist Papers discloses the existential ground of democratic republic which embraces both the constant emergence of factious struggle and the political necessity of social diversification. Some scholarly views of The Federalist Papers merely focus on the economic aspects of Publius' attempt to regulate the factional strife concerning property rights; other studies maintain that Publus' constitutional scheme simply provides a formalistic basis for the institutional compromise of the clashing interests. But a close reading of The Federalist Papers reveals the Publius' concern of faction is to deal with a deeper ground of political existence that cannot escape the differing movements of human passions, interests and opinions in everyday life. Furthermore, Publius' constitutional design of the extended republic and the separation of powers ultimately discloses the political necessity of social diversification to sustain the self-ruling power of popular government facing the clashing movements of human differentiation. Thereby, this article suggests that the Publius' political insights of the nature of popular regime help us to carefully approach the recurrent problem of democratic factions in the Republic of Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the "Green Paper on Land Reform," which represents the latest development in land reform in South Africa. It mentions that the fragmented land tenure system resulted from the Apartheid has not been successfully rectified, despite all the developments and legislative efforts. It explores the proposals of the Green Paper that include four-tier system of land tenure, property rights governed by a land administration system, and secure reforms of long-term land tenure.

Evictionism is a compromise position between the pro-life and pro-choice positions on abortion. The former prohibits killing or removing the fetus from the womb apart from the mother's health considerations at any time during the pregnancy; the latter allows for both. Evictionism splits this particular "baby in half" by legally permitting the ejection of the pre-born baby at the mother's discretion, but not killing this very young person. Given present medical technology, the fetus is viable in the third trimester, very rarely before that. Thus, evictionism resembles to the pro-life result at this stage of development of the fetus, in that the mother has the reject to eject or evict the fetus from her body, and the latter is viable outside of the womb. However, in the first two trimesters, the results of evictionism and the pro-choice position overlap: when evicted, the fetus will not survive. However, as medical technology improves, and the pre-born baby is viable outside of the womb earlier and earlier, evictionism will more and more come to resemble the pro-life position. However, evictionism will always, at any level of technology, remain separate from these two other more extremist positions. Evictionism is thus the moderate position between these two extreme perspectives. Block in a series of publications supports evictionism; Wisniewski rejects this theory. Grisillo castigates both for elements of their debate concerning improvement and the use of analogies. The present paper is a critique of this latter paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]