International Cooperation and Negotiated Settlements for Transnational Bribery: A Study of the Odebrecht Case

Transnational regulation of bribery involves several increasingly complex forms of cooperation among enforcement authorities. International investigative cooperation allows a foreign authority to assist another on criminal and/or civil investigations, through requests of mutual legal assistance, rogatory letters, as well as joint investigative teams. Sanction-based cooperation helps different authorities to transfer or extradite persons and recover proceeds of corruption to the victims. More recently, there has been a rise in cooperation in negotiated settlements with the accused. Settlement cooperation may entail joint resolutions or the coordination of settlement clauses. This paper focuses on how these three modes of cooperation intersect in cases with successive negotiated settlements. We use the Odebrecht case settlements to unpack the relation between investigative, sanction-based, and settlement cooperation in three case studies: the joint resolutions between the company and Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States, as well as two local agreements with the Dominican Republic and with Peru. We evidence how these modes of cooperation can reinforce or undermine one another. Beyond illustrating different cooperation dynamics, we also explore the role of sequencing. The existence of a previous joint resolution affects the developments of the subsequent agreements, but in different ways from those previously mapped by the literature.

Ubuntu as Reflected in the Kgotla System of the Government in Botswana

The chapter illustrates the application of Ubuntu to governance through a democratic system called “Kgotla.” The chapter places and defines Ubuntu as a unique African philosophy and worldview. The author explains how it is utilized in the Kgotla system of Botswana. The chapter describes how the African way of life embodied in Ubuntu at the Kgotla is based on collectiveness or communalism, cooperation, and joint resolution of conflicts and restorative justice among the villagers. The chapter reports that Kgotla system has now been incorporated as a business model in industry using the traditional knowledge of Ubuntu.

Alaska

The First Regular Session of the thirty-first Alaska Legislature began on January 15, 2019, and ended on May 15, 2019. A First Special Session was held from May 16, 2019, through June 13, 2019, with a Second Special Session following from July 8, 2019, through August 6, 2019. The 2019 legislative session resulted in virtually no oil and gas legislation being passed, as the Alaska Legislature focused primarily on legislation regarding the State budget and the funding of the Permanent Fund Dividend. Despite the uncharacteristic lack of oil and gas legislation, the Legislature addressed the prevalent issue of oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (“ANWR”) through the passage of Senate Joint Resolution No. 7.

Constitutional Amendments

This chapter studies Article XXIV of the Oklahoma constitution, which concerns constitutional amendments. Section 1 gives the legislature power to submit constitutional amendments to a vote of the citizens of Oklahoma and sets forth legislative direction in the first paragraph. Subject to the requirements that a legislative joint resolution proposing an amendment to the constitution set forth the test of the amendment and a ballot title for the election ballot, the precise form and content of the resolution is a matter for the legislature to decide. Under Section 2, which is routinely ignored, a law providing for a constitutional convention must be submitted to the people for their approval, passed by the legislature, and approved by the governor, and it must contain the makeup and procedure of the convention. Section 3 deals with the power of the initiative amendment.

Viability of slow-roll inflation in light of the non-zero k min measured in the cosmic microwave background power spectrum

Slow-roll inflation may simultaneously solve the horizon problem and generate a near scale-free fluctuation spectrum P ( k ). These two processes are intimately connected via the initiation and duration of the inflationary phase. But a recent study based on the latest Planck release suggests that P ( k ) has a hard cut-off, k min ≠ 0 , inconsistent with this conventional picture. Here, we demonstrate quantitatively that most—perhaps all—slow-roll inflationary models fail to accommodate this minimum cut-off. We show that the small parameter ϵ must be ≳ 0.9 throughout the inflationary period to comply with the data, seriously violating the slow-roll approximation. Models with such an ϵ predict extremely red spectral indices, at odds with the measured value. We also consider extensions to the basic picture (suggested by several earlier workers) by adding a kinetic-dominated or radiation-dominated phase preceding the slow-roll expansion. Our approach differs from previously published treatments principally because we require these modifications not only to fit the measured fluctuation spectrum but also simultaneously to fix the horizon problem. We show, however, that even such measures preclude a joint resolution of the horizon problem and the missing correlations at large angles.