Bruno Books

The book is very good but I was looking more for patterns to use for my mosaics.

This is a great book. Munari is an inspiration in they way he thinks and approaches his work. Such fun!

preliminary version, please do not quote in scholarly papers

comments are welcome to varadib@ceu.hu

It is rare that political economists should present radical political-institutional reforms that are novel, yet practically implementable, something you can feel a missionary's passion for, yet reasonably grounded in political and economic theory and empirical studies. It is even more unique that suggestions like that should have a non-zero chance to shape reality: the muddling-through EU marathon towards an adequate institutional framework presents the opportunity for a peaceful public debate about how sovereignty should be best distributed in Europe, in which Frey's and Eichenberger's proposal should be seriously considered. What is not surprising though is that something as inventive and down-to-earth as the plan in question should emerge from the political practice of the land of local patriotism, army-knifes and bankers, the home country of the authors, Switzerland.

But what do the authors propose?

The main idea of the book is that of Functional, Overlapping and Competing Jurisdictions (FOCJ). It works like this: individuals or small local communities are free to choose amongst competing FOCJ (which have their own constitutions, including democratic institutions for members and power to tax them) These concentrate on specific functions (e.g. schooling or "reducing utility losses due to fires"), have no monopoly whatsoever to supply the function in question for a certain geographic area. These FOCJ take over most of the services now provided by different levels of government.

The authors' claim that such a system would keep democratic decisions as close to people as possible, could make the quid-pro-quo between taxes and public services clearer, would make it possible for certain services to be provided for the economically optimally sized area, would open the floor to motivated "single-issue" individuals to enter active politics without getting mired in dozens of issues they don't care about, and would create flexible alternatives to the institutional strait-jackets that are nation-states.

They present and try to refute some of the most plausible counter-arguments. To quote some, they claim that quite some redistribution - the more, the less mobile the citizens - can take place in the rather decentralized system of local communities and FOCJ they propose, while larger FOCJ with appropriate entry and exit barriers could exclusively serve the function of large-scale redistribution. Further, they claim that the loss of internal coordination that is there within present regional, national, etc. governments may well be compensated for by the higher pressure on FOCJ leaders from their better informed constituents to come to agreements with other FOCJ. They also claim that the loss of opportunity to trade votes and thus reveal the intensity of preferences could be made up for by well designed constitutions for FOCJ and special FOCJ for those with especially intensive preferences about certain services.

In the rest of the pamphlet they first expand on their main idea: in the rest of part I, chapters 2-5, they compare FOCJ with political decentralization and strengthening direct democracy, arguing that FOCJ would produce advantages of both; they discuss the how-to of implementation, mentioning, if not solving, the possible problems of natural monopolies and discrimination; finally, they look for similar arrangements in history, and in the modern Switzerland and the USA. In part II they consider the role of FOCJ in Europe. They chastize the centralizing tendencies of the EU, which flies in the face of the declared European value of subsidiarity; they compare theirs with other constitutional proposals for Europe. They conclude that Europe-wide constitutional guarantee to form and run FOCJ and a prohibition of blocking FOCJ, especially of double taxation, by national governments could best contribute to European integration (by cross-border FOCJ) without further centralization. In the third part they look beyond Europe: they argue that the expansion of certain European FOCJ beyond the strict nation-state-based borders of the EU could ease the bitter yes-or-no nature of EU expansion: the Ukraine or Turkey or some of their regions could easily participate in certain European FOCJ without the Ukraine's or Turkey's accession. They also argue that FOCJ could solve many of the political and social problems of developing countries.

The presentation is easy to follow and clear of technicalities, set in the framework of mainstream political economy. The empirical parts are supported by apposite tables and relevant articles, and every chapter followed by suggested further reading.

My reference to the book as a pamphlet is not meant to disparage it: it is natural that it should be a pamphlet. When first presenting something fairly radical that one believes in, pledging for its being considered for public debate, when affirming its untried advantages over the many second-best existing institutional alternatives already in existence, the adequate genre is the pamphlet.

Of course such an unabashedly one-sided approach makes the reader prone to take up the role of the devil's advocate. And there is a host of considerations, even over and above the criticisms mentioned but not convincingly refuted in the book itself, that are not tackled in a convincing manner.

One is the question of residual responsibilities. What about the default of FOCJ? The moral hazard created by the threat of default? Who has the ultimate right to use legitimate force?

Another is the question of control of FOCJ. The status of FOCJ, with its internal democracy coupled with economic relations with its members (taxing and serving them) is a mixture of market and democratic-bureaucratic coordination, somewhat akin to cooperatives or employee-controled entreprises. Is a democratic control necessary? Is it efficient? Wouldn't FOCJ without democratic control be the same as privatizing services and the collection of taxes?

A third one is a lack of analysis of the political conditions that make such a system of FOCJ feasible. What changes would make it possible to establish such a system in regions where nothing like it has existed? If interests and path dependence have blocked the introduction of a socially better system of FOCJ, why would that change? In other words: why here and now? Is it that the shaping of the EU and the political reshuffling necessary for it simply puts major political-institutional changes on the agenda?

It is my tentative answer to the last question that explains why I like the pamphlet and accept it wholeheartedly as a direction of institutional development and as a reasearch agenda. I believe that the picture in The Sovereign Individual painted by Davidson and Reese-Mogg is essentially true: the technological development that makes advanced telecommunication and the Internet possible erodes the power of nation-states based on the tax-exploitation of low-mobility individuals and companies at their mercy. The long-run political-economic effects of that process have not been analyzed yet, however, at the minimum, that change forces nation-states to compete more and more with each other for retaining individuals and legal persons that are less and less physically localized.

If that is the direction in which technological developments drive political-institutional changes, then the system that the authors argue for, a framework of FOCJ backed up by a Europe-wide constitutional guarantee, could be an ideally flexible device for a relatively gradual and peaceful transition to the adequate political setup of the future, whatever it will be like. An intriguing institutional reform proposal with such a prospect should be enough to brighten up any political scientist's or political economist's eyes. But the lion's share of the job, a lot of analytical and modelling work to analyse the trade-offs between the traditional system, the book's suggestion and the market is still ahead.

Balázs Váradi,

www.cesa.hu

and

Department of Political Science, Central European University

the right to re-use all or parts of this review in scholarly papers is retained by the author

What is sleazier than a hot tryst in a hot-sheet motel?..Virtually nothing...but this picture essay permits the sleaze to sizzle and stimulate, as well as, visually satisfy.

Recently exhibited @ Facts of Life exhibition @ the Hayward Gallery in London - There audiences were allowed to see a series of photos entitled Tokyo Nostalgy 1985-93. Like that series, Viaggio Sentimentale is the perfect exhibiton of Araki. A beautifully presented portfolio of life - Not many words can express this simple statement further. Take an individual and explore the idea - that we are as alone as we are untited in a mass group of people. Each person experiences the world in their own way. We all appreciate the world, from the flowers to those around us. Sometimes interaction occurs - and we carry on in our normal way - On other occasions we fall victim of our piers and circumstance. To look on this work as pornographic is to miss the point - We all have pornography in our lives and the best tends to come from what we create personally on those rare interactions with others - In much the same way, what we get from our daily chores, such as commuting and eating, lesuire and work - is down to the way we treat it!

Long story short Araki presents here a slice of life - maybe not yours - but definately someone elses! View, enjoy, judge, and appreciate.

Amazon is the best you can find for anything you want or order from internet with excellent results and perfect customer services.

As one of the most authority medicine books, Non fusion Technologies in Spine Surgery is a handbook that can be used as tools for search the information in orthopeadics.

Where can you buy it and which is the best site that will promise secure for your payment for you to choose in online-ordering?

It's Amazon, the best online-order provider around the world

Revue universitaire de première qualité. Bien illustré, pour pemettre au débutant de bien se familiariser avec la science. Sa seule lacune..... se concentre d'avantage sur le Québec.

Relevant in the way it presents tourism/Landscape relation. A nust have for architects and tourism related decision makers.

Bruno Walter was an incredible musician, conductor, you need only listen to his Beethoven, and Mozart to find the balance of emotion passion and his restraint and affinity for classical shape.He conducted Gustav Mahler as if the ink had not dried yet on the score, and the earliest recordings do have their problems, still he was the closest save for Klemperer of those who survived Europe.Walter also knew howe to build an orchestra as George Szell.
Here discussed is the lifeworlds of music,its precision,passion correct tempi, extrinsic and intrinsic elements within music-making,where is the life force in music resides, where does music come to nourish in life,how to give shape to a musical phrase, how it comes to mean something and how you best communicate this to an orchestra. There is also music that seeks death,as Mozart's D-Minor latter Piano Concerto he did with Rudolf Serkin, the severity/weight is overwhelming.Walter you can say practiced a kind of philosophy in what he did,although never bringing that vocabulary to his/these thoughts; things we seem to know already but need incessant reminding in that music making is one of those realms that can erase itself from view,come to be self-indulged in the moment or gesture especially now with homogenized, digitalized culture all around and its influence on the music world its creation/composition and production; the classical world,the one Walter discusses seems to be receding, in that we come to value less the experience of a symphony,or the timbre of the violoncello; we think we don't need it to nourish our souls and intellect. Walter speaks in great generalities, so you need to bring yourself,the world literature of music to his profound/useful thoughts and views to interpolate with your own experiences.Music it seems we are only left with our own memories, what we can recall is all that exists. At first it all seems obvious, ear,hand and gesture, rhythm,melos and mind yet unknown as you apply what he says to pieces you may know. His thoughts also apply, may apply to contemporary music, for the marks of quality are identical, it was Alban Berg who said you must play Mozart as if it was written yesterday, and Schoneberg as if its was older, meaning to fix a remedy for the familiar.
Walter's influence seems to be always there,as if he never existed he would need to be invented.He knew how to fix a centrist reading of works,not overly impassioned yet not without it either; to soften it up for contemplation.It seems odd that take any conductor and whomever stands in front on the podiumcan summon entirely different timbres from the same identical tones and harmonies. I think Walter can teach how best to expect a minimum and fly further into deeper interpretive readings. He was a transitional figure having to cope with exile and abandonmment. Yet he knew how best to transform this suffering into what he conducted. Still we value the depth of dignity,truth,and honesty for the human spirit and its development.

I do not know enough about this subject to make a professional comment. But the general line of this book which argues that children must be presented with texts meaningful to them if they are to learn to read properly makes much sense. The authors contend that when children are taught to read from texts which are "banal, dominated by pictures, obsessed with 'having fun', and sometimes nonsensical" they will not understand the importance of reading.
They too indicate that a focus on technical matters only is mistaken, and that unconscious and emotional factors play a large part in learning to read. They point out that children who are taught to read in a preliminary fashion at home, and who live in a book- friendly world will in general do better in reading throughout their lives.
This seems to me an admirable effort to help teach children to find meaning in reading, and thus live more enriched lives.