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The decentralization of governance is increasingly considered crucial for delivering development and is being widely adopted in sub-Saharan countries. At the same time, distributed (decentralized) energy systems are increasingly recognized for their role in achieving universal access to energy and are being promoted in sub-Saharan countries. However, little attention has been paid by governments and energy practitioners to the dynamic interrelationships between national and local government and the role of governance decentralization in transitioning to distributed energy systems. This paper traces the complex relationships between accelerated delivery of distributed energy and decentralized local governance systems. The argument is grounded in an exploration of two different approaches to decentralized energy systems governance in Kenya and Malawi. For Kenya, analysis focuses on the energy sector since the adoption of the new decentralized constitution in 2010. In Malawi, it focuses on the involvement of the authors in piloting Local Authority Energy Officers in districts under the decentralization of Malawian energy policy. Our analysis shows that accelerating the speed and scale of implementation for distributed energy systems and enhancing their sustainability and socio-economic impacts is directly linked to the quality of local and national governance structures and their interrelationships. The paper extends existing work in energy and evidence literacy for policy actors by developing an analytical framework, to enable more effective local governance within energy access initiatives in the Global South.

This chapter outlines the concept of vastogenesis, the premise that waste-generation is a core biopolitical component of mass consumption. Over the last few decades, globalizing capitalism has led to increased sectoral concentration in which a few hegemons dominate wholesale/retail goods, inducing vastogenesis as a critical mechanism of profitability. Vastogenic mechanisms connect global zones of mass food production to zones of mass consumption through reflexive production, distribution and transport systems and waste is deconstructed and analysed as a proxy exchange value through (a) the value of the waste itself, and (b) as a mechanism for accelerating consumption and material throughflow. The UK is used to explore the conceptual territory of waste and how growth in vastogenesis is intensified by contractual domination, sub-contracting and monopsonist practices by global food hegemons which simultaneously control commodity and food prices at the bottom of the food production chain, complemented by control over sale prices in zones of food consumption through food abundance. Appetite creation is also examined as a driving force of vastogenesis through constant expansion of food ranges and attempts to capture market share by appeals to the symbolism of sophistication, selling a globalist, cosmopolitan diet in zones of mass food consumption.

Two hundred years ago in Great Britain, the political system was dominated by electoral power exercised through rotten boroughs, a system characterized by institutionalized corruption - these electoral boroughs were owned by local elites, and voting was restricted to a handful of people. Whilst industrially she was the wonder of the world, the political system in Great Britain was restricted, corruption was the norm, and it seemed impossible to imagine that such an ancient system could be changed. By the time of the Reform Act of 1832 however, Britain had already been going through a process of constitutional change lasting for hundreds of years – it is only now, from our position of 20/20 hindsight, that we choose to interpret all of the events since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 as if it were some seamless whole, an inevitable process that would lead to the position of superior moral governance that we appear to think we are in now.

This article arose from work undertaken on behalf of a UK-based NGO developing a policy response to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It looks at GATS as a key to locating development NGOs (NGDOs) within the broader field of development aims and practices, examining the long-term implications of GATS with respect to the idea of a 'fourth position' for such NGOs. It is argued that this theoretical position fails to take into account changing imbalances of power between NGDOs and their Southern counterparts that began under structural adjustment, as a consequence of which many NGDOs now occupy a position from which effective mediation between civil society, the state, and the market would be difficult if not impossible. In addition, GATS represents a step-change along the evolutionary path towards a market-oriented ideology whose verticalist worldview represents a profound contradiction to the avowedly progressive aims of most NGDOs.

Purpose - This paper seeks to use the way in which markets in derivatives have developed historically to examine how neo-classical market-oriented economic theory has been used as a stalking-horse to create an illusionary market in the increasingly complex derivatives that have brought about the current global financial crisis and which threaten liberal democracy.Design methodology approach - The paper analyses the current global financial crisis using three separate themes in the development of derivatives themselves: the development of financial derivatives themselves; the subversion of risk analysis; and the co-opting of the concept and analysis of fair value by the financial services industry and its support network. These themes are used to show how self-regulation, supervision and the perception of risk have effectively been abandoned in the creation of an immensely profitable market based on an imaginary product. The study uses a combination of available facts and figures from professional literature and from international financial institutions and financial services organisations, as well as comparative analyses outlining financial services praxis.Findings - It is suggested that in an effectively unregulated, globalising capitalism this crisis and others like it are inevitable, and that the self-regulating capacities of capitalism suggested by neo-classical theory are non-existent.Originality value - The paper uses facts and figures provided by the financial services industry to illustrate the poverty of the theoretical justification of the market in financial derivatives and the critiques of various practitioners and experts to point out that the crisis came foretold.

Throughout the region, historically there has been a distinct lack of long-term planning in regard to the economies of Latin America. This in turn has resulted in a lack of urban planning and the subsequent uneven concentrations of rapidly-growing urban populations that have led to the current generation of megacities. These megacities act increasingly as concentrators and accumulators of the wealth of the country as a whole, dominating the national hinterland - centralization and concentration of economic and state power is a serious problem throughout Latin America and can be see in its extremes in city-regions such as Gran Caracas in Venezuela. This process of metropolitan concentration, derived to a great extent from the urban reflection of colonial and post-colonial power structures, has restricted the development of most of these cities, which might otherwise be more fully connected to global city networks - such megacities are increasingly hyper-conurbations of a differentially internally integrated character.

It will come as no surprise to most observers of Central American affairs that the cities of the region are, by and large, still relatively poorly connected to the global economy, at least in terms of the connectivity indicators used in this chapter. This should not, however, be taken to infer that Central American economies are somehow autarchic or inward-looking. Far from it. In fact, the region has long had a very strongly externally oriented economy, based traditionally upon the exportation of a limited number of primary commodities although more recently tourism, non-traditional agricultural exports and light industrial exports have become important, as have remittances from Central American migrants living outside the region (Robinson, 2003; Orozco, 2005; Sánchez-Ancochea, 2008). Nevertheless, while Central America continues to be a largely externally driven economy, its cities in general remain less well connected into the network of global cities formed through the offices of major advanced producer service firms than is the case for other parts of Latin America (see Chapter 14).

If I were a Muslim I don't know what I'd find more surreal; being lectured on the \"evil and inhuman\" nature of my beliefs by an ex-member of the Hitler Youth, or the fact that when Manuel II Palaeologus wrote his infamous letter he was sitting in the ruins of an empire still shattered by the attentions of Pope Innocent...

The row over the Pope's quoting of the words of Manuel II Palaeologus has missed the context in which the emperor was speaking (Report, September 16). Manuel presided over the disintegration of the Byzantine domain, crushed between the competing powers of the mercantilist adventurism of the...