<p>&#8220;Web3&#8221; is now part of our collective imaginaries, even if the specifics of what the buzzword entails remain murky and inaccessible to many. Originally coined in 2014 by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, to describe &#8220;a decentralised internet ecosystem based on blockchain,&#8221; the term took off after the NFT boom of 2021, catalysed by the embrace of the crypto ecosystem by the likes of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).</p>\n<p>Like other social technologies, the swirl of narrative, attention and capital around web3 are as much part of its utility as the tools themselves. Mainstream discourses around &#8220;the web3 space&#8221;âand the blockchains, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrencies, decentralised web (dweb) frameworks that make it upâhave been shaped by a cacophony of criticism, partiality and hype, played out over the past five years on Twitter and Discord.</p>\n<p><em>Future Art Ecosystems 3: Art x Decentralised Tech (FAE3)</em> attempts to take a long(er) view on the impact of decentralised technologies and imaginaries on the structures and processes that underpin the development of 21st-century cultural infrastructure, specifically art and advanced technologies (AxAT). The downward slope of the hype cycle towards another &#8220;crypto winter&#8221;âas well as a market correction in the wider tech industryâis a good time to take a sober view of the lessons, potentials and affordances that have been generated over these years of energetic innovation and speculative boom and bust&#8230;</p>\n
The administrative system of England after the Norman Conquest has been described as âthe adaptation of the ancient customary institutions of a decentralized system to the uses of [the Norman and Angevin kingsâ] highly centralized administrationâ. 1 It was complex, adaptable, efficient to a high degree, and constantly changing. It had only a few of the features of a modern bureaucracy, as âgovernmentâ to the medieval man did not imply anything resembling the modern state and its workings. It meant the practical expression of the rights owed to the king by his subjects and the duties of the king to his people. Its chief functions were the raising of finance and the administration of justice.
Joann P. Cobb PASCAL'S WAGER AND TWO MODERN LOSERS Blaise Pascal addressed his argument of the wager to the seventeenth -century sceptic confronting the failure of reason to answer the question, "Does God exist?" Pascal in his zeal for conversion of the free-thinker intended the wager on the affirmative answer as only a last-ditch appeal to self-interest and as a predisposition for the infusion of faith, and modern opinion has been influenced by Voltaire's disparaging comment that it is indecent to introduce the concept of a game involving gain and loss to the grave subject of the existence of God. But three centuries later, the wager has a relevance to the society shaped by logical positivism and existential "angst" that has not been entirely overlooked. Two modern short stories present wagerers who lose: Granny Weatherall in Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" and The Misfit in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." These contemporary gamblers illustrate an implication of the argument unexploited by Pascal, but the frequent inclusion of these stories in anthologies and textbooks testifies to the compelling pertinence of the "game." The most appropriate position in the Pense'es for the fragment containing the argument of the wager is still the subject of some debate, but most editors place it after Pascal has delineated the miseries of the human condition and the paradoxical status of mankind. A mixture of misery and greatness, man is endlessly frustrated: "We desire truth, and find within us naught but uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness" (p. 87). Man's greatness, for Pascal, consists in knowledge of his own misery as he confronts the human situation: "No great elevation of soul is needed to understand that here below is no true and solid satisfaction; that all our pleasures are but vanity, that our woes are infinite, and that lastly death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly 187 188Philosophy and Literature in a few years land us in the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or miserable" (p. 105). Such understanding leads to thought of the Infinite, but "if there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible" and we are incapable of knowing by the light of nature "what He is, or whether He is" (p. 117). Yet, Pascal says, "a game is on, at the other end of . . . infinite distance, and heads or tails will turn up." Pascal argues that man must wager for he is "embarked," and he cites the odds of the game's outcome as it will affect man's happiness: "Let us weigh gain and loss in calling heads that God is. Reckon these two chances: if you win, you win all; if you lose, you lose naught" (p. 119). Pascal secures the assent of the postulated listener with repeated assertions that the chances of success are even, while the possible gain is infinitely disproportionate to the stake. Pascal's "unbeliever" gives up without much fight, agreeing that he will wager though he cannot believe. In a much criticized passage, Pascal then prescribes the sceptic's course: seek a decrease of human passions, rather than an increase of divine proofs, make believe you believe by using the ritual of the Catholic religion, and this will bring you to believe. And Pascal repeats the question: "What have you to lose?" (p. 121). Pascal's answer, of course, is "nothing" (rien), and he describes the attributes of the sceptic who follows the path of the believer: "You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, beneficent, a good friend, true. ... I tell you that you will gain in this life, and that at every step you take on this road you will see such certainty of gain, such nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last realize that you have wagered on something certain and infinite, for which you have risked naught" (pp. 121, 123). But a modern reader is not so quick to agree that "naught" is at stake: "Unmoved by the apologist's disparagement...
The reaction of public utilities to the addition (and competitive) sources of energy supplied by solar technologies will have a significant impact on the commercialization of solar energy. Decentralized applications of solar energy need utility-produced power to back up the energy produced by solar means. The cost and availability of this power will largely determine the acceptance of solar energy. There are three legal issues surrounding the role of utilities in the solar commercialization effort: (1) the extent to which utilities may own, sell, lease, finance, or service solar devices for utility customers; (2) the degree to which solar-powered utilities may be able to compete with existing utilities; and (3) the degree to which various utility rate structures will be allowed to penalize decentralized solar users. The impact of state constitutional and statutory provisions upon these issues is examined, along with relevant federal constitutional doctrines. Finally, the statutes of the National Energy Act, many of which specifically address the above issues, are discussed.
The literature on the deomposition of mathematical programs as models for organizational design and resource allocation in decentralized organizations is extensive. Although models differ in detail, all conceptualize the allocation problem as a multi-level managerial coordination procedure, involving local (divisional) and global (organization-wide) resources, in which informational automony is to be maintained. That is, coordination of resource usage by relatively autonomous divisions is to be effected in these models without any one agent in the organization accumulating complete knowledge of the technical resource transformations, payoff or cost coefficients and detailed plans that divisions utilize in converting resources to useful ends. Unfortunately there has been little empirical investigation into the implementational problems of applying these models in decentralized organizations. This study reports on an experiment with human subjects as decision makers in a simulated decentralized organization. The formulation of the overall resource-allocation problem as a linear program permitted two forms of coordination: price-directive in which transfer pricing is used to allocate resources, and resource-directive in which a rationing or budgeting approach is used. Both schemes can be shown to solve the overall organizational problem but impose different information, communication, and decision-making structures upon the subject managers. The experiment was designed to examine comparative managerial performance by the subjects, as central coordinating agents, under the alternative transfer pricing and budgeting schemes. Within each of these schemes two levels of decision time pressure were also introduced to examine its impact upon subject performance. The purpose of the investigation was to study the influence of organizational design (allocation scheme) and situational factors (time pressure) upon human decision-making under carefully controlled experimental conditions. The experimental setting was that of a decentralized university incorporating three subordinate college divisions and one coordinating agent, the president's office. The colleges were modeled as linear programs and the coordination function was assigned to the experimental subjects. In the price-directive scheme a subject assigned a transfer price to each of two global resources in each planning iteration. In the resource-directive scheme a subject directly allocated amounts of the two global resources to each of the colleges in each planning iteration. Consistent with decomposition theory, feedback to the subject in the form of aggregate resource demands (price-direction) or individual bids for higher resource allocations (resource-direction) was given to initiate a new planning iteration. The budgetary goal utilized by subjects was to maximize net dollar contribution from colleges to the university under prespecified quality-of-education constraints. After several planning iterations each subject finalized the resource allocations, terminating the experiment. The hypotheses were that resource-directive subjects would outperform price-directive subjects, that high decision time pressure would exacerbate decision making and that subjects would outperform decomposition algorithms in early iterations. Data from the experiment did not support the first two hypotheses; the third was confirmed. Aside from concluding that strategic factors (organizational design) and tactical factors (time pressure) strongly influence decision making behavior, several specific implications can be tentatively drawn. In similar settings transfer pricing schemes may be preferable to traditional budgeting schemes for planning resource allocations. Furthermore, the potential exists for profitable use of man-machine procedures for resource allocation involving decision support technology in the form of decomposition models to augment human decision heuristics. Finally, experimental methods offer a vehicle for addressing human factors and implementational considerations missing from current analytic models.
Switzerland is a federal state with a surface area of 4I,288 km2 and a population of about 6.4 million (I976) of which about I million are foreigners; it consists of 26 cantons and half-cantons with different cultures, languages and religious persuasions. As in many other branches of public life, education in Switzerland is decentralized. Besides, most of the cantons share their charges with the communes. So, although each canton and its communes is autonomous as far as education is concerned, be it compulsory attendance at school, which is generally from 8 to 9 years, or secondary or university education, the Confederation essentially looks after the tasks that cannot be satisfactorily undertaken by the local or regional authorities. It particularly plays a compensating role when the financial charges and the possibilities of education are not equally divided among all the cantons. This is the reason why it is turning its attention in particular to vocational training: professional apprenticeships and technical schools. In this way, vocational training forms a homogeneous part of our educational system. In connection with this the Confederation is able partly to protect the interests of those cantons with no university. It also regulates medical studies; furthermore, this competency has led to a harmonization of 'maturity examinations' (secondary school leaving examinations) in the whole country. Primary school education is compulsory and free of charge in state schools. Each canton has its own laws and regulations. This diversity in school systems is a hindrance to the migration of families. For this reason there have been attempts made to harmonise the system; in French Switzerland a common programme for the six French-speaking cantons for the first four years of primary school has been established. Thanks to the agreement on school co-ordination, made by the cantonal Directors of education, the age of entrance to primary school (6 years) and the duration of compulsory attendance at school (g years) will soon be uniform in Switzerland. The communes play an important part in this sector of education. They intervene in particular through the local school committees. Primary schools are financed by the communes and the cantons. Private schools also
The meteoric decline in hardware costs now in progress will result in computing becoming a personnel-intensive enterprise. Most of this personnel will be devoted to software development and support of computing users. The financing and budgeting in most university computing centers is centered on hardware and computing cycles. How, then, can university computing best adapt to the changing economic structure of the information processing industry?Who should provide user support services? The central computing service center? Individual departments and/or colleges? Are there significant economies of scale in user support? If there are, do they outweigh the responsiveness that can be provided by a decentralized network of user support services?Who should pay for user support services? The users? The university? If the university pays, should centralized or decentralized arrangements be made for the services?Who should determine the level of expenditure on user support services? The market? The departments and colleges? The central administration? The computing center management?What will be the policy implications of the alternate answers to the questions above? Will they enhance or retard the decentralization of computing services? Will they encourage users to depend on internal or external facilities? Will they lead to a growth or decline of user support activity within the computing center?All of the above questions are now and have been debated strenuously regarding the provision of computing cycles. There is every reason to believe that the same debate will take place regarding support services. Strong user support services will be the sine qua non of high quality university computing in the future, and it will not be available unless we deal promptly with the issues of pricing, budgeting, and organization outlined above.
The «New Towns » experience. A tentative reply to J.-P. Alduy. (J.-E. Roul-lier, p. 79-104) «Few equally ambitious urbanistic projects have been conceived, adopted, planned and carried out so rapidly as have the New Towns. » J.-E. Roullier quotes this remark of J.-P. Alduy and makes of it the central question to which an answer must be found in order to grasp the dynamism of the New Towns. After criticizing J.-P. Alduy' s thesis (the New Towns as a «beacon» project of the technology), J.-E. Roullier puts forward three sets of explanatory hypotheses that call for examination, verification and comparative research : a widespread consensus on the aims ; the existence of the Paris region district with its own budget and resources, a unique insitution in France ; lastly , a decentralized system for the creation of the New Towns giving full responsibility to all the parties concerned, especially the elected officials and Government representatives â a non-technocratic arrangement compared with other Western experiences of the same type. Aside from these considerations, the former high-ranking official of the Groupe central des villes nouvelles (Central Agency for New Towns) feels that the French New Town experience merits careful examination with particular attention to the following points : â the coincidence, at least from the historic standpoint, of the New Towns achievement with the phase of economic expansion and rapid urbanization in France (1960-1975) ; â the «technocracy» : its composition, the role of the various groups that constitute it ; â the 1962-1967 period witnessed the establishment of the New Town project and the setting up of the basic mechanisms required for its implementation : A careful analysis of the motivations, the power relationships, the role of the various actors during that period would be useful. The way the project was set up and financed, the organization and working methods of the various agencies concerned with its implementation, marked a break with the habitual behavior of the French administration, upsetting previous balances. Examples of this are the Central Agency for New Towns, the constant support of the Finance Minister for the New Towns, the working methods put into practice that forced Government officials to establish a different type of relationship with the local elected authorities and those directly responsible for carrying out the operations. In conclusion, J.-E. Roullier spells out the «lesson» of the New Towns : As opposed to the generally «dis-articulated» functioning of the chain of urbanism agents and officials, the New Towns experience is a successful example of a different way of operating which «re-articulates », on the one hand, responsible community groupings having at their disposal the programmed means required but limited role of stimulation, assistance, for an overall facilities policy, and, on guidance, and supervision. This is an the other, permanent interdisciplinary interpretation substantially different from teams working on the spot in contact Alduy' s view of an all-powerful techno- with the builders and fulfilling a vital cracy, arm of the central state apparatus.
The extraordinarily rapid advance of microelectronics is causing a rapid drop in both the cost and economy of scale of computing equipment. In less than a decade, the powerful economic incentive for centralizing the production of computing cycles has reversed. Simultaneously, the productivity of computing professionals has not kept pace with inflation, and it appears that staff productivity gains will be difficult to achieve in a decentralized environment.Distribution of computing equipment is making support for the individual computer user more difficult in the following ways:-- There is a need for support of multiple types of small computer hardware.-- There is a need to maintain multiple operating systems and versions of applications software.-- There is little knowledge and experience in providing documentation, user training, and consulting support in a highly distributed multi-architecture computing environment.This paper outlines Cornell's response to the challenge of decentralized computing. The paper details the rationale, planning, organization, financing, and staffing for the new Decentralized Academic Computer Support group in Cornell Computing Services. In addition, the responsibilities of that group and its interaction with the other groups in Computing Services is described. Finally, attention is given to the relationship between Computing Services and the Cornell community regarding small computers.The accelerating trend of decentralizing the production of computing cycles presents user support groups with both a challenge and an opportunity. Failure to respond will result in more expensive and lower quality computing for the university community as well as declining utilization of user support services.
672 BOOK REVIEWS not with the evil that fear has to do with, but rather with " the eminence of the divine good, by whose power some evil can be inflicted." And in the ad 2 St. Thomas quickly tosses aside the objection, as not being about the gift of foar at all, because that objection had to do with the sort of fear which has evil for its object. Plainly, the position now is that the gift of fear does not have any sort of evil for its object. That is not the position either of the De spe or the ST 2-2 (and seems at odds also with ST 2-2.19.9. ad 2 and ad 3) . And if reverence, an act of the gift of fear, is a form of fear, what has become of the position that the objectof fear is evil? All I mean to argue here is that Guindon should have presented a full-dress discussion of this issue, not the few remarks such as he gives at pp. 77-79 and 246-247. This is especially so in view of his own judgment concerning the importance of the doctrine at stake: thus, at p. 319, he can speak of St. Thomas's keen awareness of the ultimate foundation of fear, namely the finitude of the creature faced with the infinity of God. A much less serious point: Guindon's use of the expression "la pedagogic nouvelle" for the learning process proper to the New Law (cf. p. 139, p. 323, etc.). "Pedagogue" suggests the stern discipline proper to the Old Law (cf. p. 134). At p. 330 he speaks with more finesse, in my opinion, using "pedagogic" for the Old Law and "education" for the New. The book is well proof-read by today's standards, but on p. 359, the first mode of amor sui (wrongly numbered" 3 ") has a lacuna: this at an important moment of the discussion. The size of the numbers used to designate the notes is inconveniently small. College dominicain de philosophie et de theologie Ottawa, Ontario, Canada LAWRENCE DEWAN, 0. P. Theology in a New Key. By ROBERT McAFEE BROWN. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978. Pp. 212. $6.95. This appealing book is an introduction to a body of literature, Latin American liberation theology, that is not well-known in the Englishspeaking world. Thanks to Orbis Books, founded by the Maryknoll Fathers, the principal books and documents of this theology are available in English. Still, since the method of this theology is of recent origin, and since its starting point is very disturbing to the industrialized countries of the West, it is not easy to understand what is being said by this theology. What is this disturbing starting point? According to the theology of liberation, the Gospel can be grasped only if we analyse the concrete form which BOOK REVIEWS 678 evil takes in our society and understand the Christian message as God's initiative summoning and directing us to overcome evil. According to the Latin American theologians, the dominant systemic evil in their society is the international capitalistic system that inflicts on this society economic and cultural dependency, pushes large sections of the population into destitution and early mortality, and creates in the middle classes a distorted perception of reality. Robert McAfee Brown, a well-known Protestant theologian, is famous for his ability to introduce a wide Christian audience to issues discussed in high theology. Brown writes about learned things in a simple and direct style and relates them to people's experiences. He knows where the mind and heart of the Protestant community are. For him, theology is never a conversation confined to academics: 1t must always involve the believing community. This is so because Christian truth is propter salutem. The conversation with the local congregation protects the theologian from losing the thread. The book under review is a brilliant application of this method to an explosive topic. Can one kee'P a congregation in their seats while explaining to them that capitalism may have a distorting effect on the perception of God and divine salvation? Brown does it. Brown offers us a propaedeutic of...
Blockchain technology has held numerous promises: for a better internet, for decentralization, for a critique of power â and maybe even a critique of capitalism. Until, that is, capitalism struck back and turned this new tech into a symptom rather than a solution. But is there still the potential to change trajectory? Wassim Alsindi talks to Simon Denny about the function of ideology in Web3 communities, the origin of seed phrases, and the role of art in enabling positive change.\nAn astrophysicist by education, Wassim explains why he started working at the crossroad of science, Web3 initiatives, and art. He talks about ...
THE MAJOR INTEREST in the recent literature on economies has lain in the results about but finite economies that have been derived from the results proved for economies. It is thus important to find simple yet general proofs for economies. In this article we wish to provide a simple yet general proof of the existence of a competitive equilibrium in an infinite, nonstandard economy with production. The simplicity of our proof comes from the fact that nonstandard analysis can deal with large and small quantities very much as ordinary analysis deals with finite quantities.2 As a result, it is possible to follow very closely the proof of existence for an economy with a finite number of traders, such as that in G. Debreu's classic Theory of Value [6]. In fact, if one is willing to believe that nonstandard analysis permits us to manipulate quantities as claimed above, then no further knowledge of nonstandard analysis is required in order to follow the proof. As examples of the simplicity of nonstandard analysis, it may be pointed out that no analogue of the Fatou-Schmeidler lemma [7, p. 69], a fairly difficult mathematical theorem, is required; nor is it necessary to prove separately that preserves upper-semicontinuity, a proof that Aumann [1] has recently simplified, because integration in the nonstandard model consists of an infinite summation, hence an appeal to 1.9.4 of Debreu [6] suffices to establish this point. As our main objective is to obtain results about but finite economies, it is a welcome bonus to find out that no further effort is needed to obtain these desired theorems. This arises because of the following property of nonstandard analysis. Consider a sequence of real numbers {an} which tends to zero. If we could extend this sequence to the integers, it would surely be a necessary property of the values of {an} at the integers that they are all infinitely close to zero. What makes nonstandard analysis powerful is that the above line of reasoning can be reversed, so to speak. Suppose we have a sequence which
SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH IN 1555, the Marian martyr Laurence Saunders condemned the highly ceremonial nature of the Roman Catholic religion. Even from the beginning, he declared, ceremonies had been invented and ordained for the rude infancy and weak infirmity of man. That the primitive had few ceremonies was proof of its greater perfection. By contrast, the many ceremonies of the late church papistical-partly blasphemous, partly unsavory, and unprofitable1-were evidence of its rudeness. Yet Saunders himself displayed a ritualistic pattern of behavior replete with ceremonial devices through much of his life. In study he was diligent and painful; in godly life he declared the fruits of a well exercised conscience; he prayed often and with great fervor; and in his prayers, as also at other times, he had his part of the spiritual exercises.... 2 Saunders was not alone. Many Marian martyrs prepared themselves for death in ways reminiscent of Catholic ceremony. They devised a compulsive ritual that they performed meticulously in exacting detail. This elaborate ceremony followed an inflexible pattern: a precise, self-disciplined daily existence, culminating in a ritualistic burning at the stake that duplicated the deaths of the pre-Nicean martyrs. Why did Saunders and his fellow reforming martyrs adopt a stylized pattern of behavior similar in many respects to the Catholic ritual they abhorred and believed ineffectual for salvation? By using the insights gleaned from psychological theory, it may be possible to shed some light on the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom and to understand why the most fervent and enigmatic of all religious types followed a rigid style of life and a ritualistic ceremony of death. Those insights suggest that the martyrs found it necessary to adopt an unbending form of ritualistic behavior to insulate themselves from the inner perturbations caused by their fear of martyrdom. Many were plagued by the suspicion that the actual motive in accepting martyrdom was suicide. Assuaging this fear required a
The organizational structure of the League of Nations' non-political workâon economic and financial matters, on communications and transit, on health, on narcotic drug control and certain other social problemsâwas essentially a centralized one, although each technical âorganizationâ enjoyed a considerable degree of independence. The Expert Committees in each organization reported to the League of Nations Council and were served by members of the League secretariat; and the work was financed from the budget of the League. That budget also financed the work of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which had been established, in accordance with Chapter 13 of the Treaty of Versailles, âat the seat of the League of Nations as part of the organisation of the Leagueâ. The proposals made in August 1939 by the Special Committee of the League of Nations on the Development of International Co-operation in Economic and Social Affairs (the Bruce Committee) would have replaced in this field the League Councilâa body consisting largely of Ministers for Foreign Affairs and concerned primarily with political issuesâby a Central Committee for Economic and Social Questions, composed in large part of ministers and high officials directly involved in such questions and in which non-Members of the League could participate on a basis of equality with Members. The Central Committee was to exercise, as the League Council had done, âdirection and controlâ over all the League's economic and social activities.
The relationships among transaction costs of lending and the size of borrower, capital market imperfections and economic development, and small enterprise financing and informal credit markets are described. Transaction costs include both administrative costs and default risk. Financial innovations reduce these costs and thus lower the costs of lending and borrowing and narrow the interest rate differential. In India, the Syndicate Bank has used financial innovations to compete with larger banks. The major feature of these innovations has been the creative adaptation of banking technology to suit local conditions, including recruitment and promotion policies, decentralized decision-making and avoidance of paper work, and innovative deposit schemes. The Syndicate Bank until 1965 was considered an unsophisticated rural bank, and the Central Bank did not like some of its innovations. However, since the 1969 nationalization of 14 major banks, the Central Bank has been induced to expand branches in rural areas. In forcing this emphasis on the widening and deepening of the geographical and functional scope of the banking system, the Syndicate Bank has been regarded by the Central Bank as a model bank. Tabular financial data are appended.
This paper presents a preliminary exploration of the design and deployment of solidarity primitives for Web3 social security, based on insights generated during Other Internet&#8217;s Web3 Work Forum held in July 2023. The paper proposes a modular framework to develop solidarity primitives addressing the three dimensions of security for DAO contributors: psychosocial stability, financial stability, and regulatory clarity. Additionally, it outlines a range of on-chain and off-chain mechanisms and improvement proposals specific to each dimension. Lastly, it discusses current challenges to implementation.\n
Aspects of the finnish administration. After a short historical introduction (before and after independence), the author describes the organization of central administration and decentralized units and presents some services : Finance, Education, National Defense. Reforms are under way or in the blueprint : they concern the administration of justice, deconcentration of some services, democratization of administrative life, departmental autonomy.
Research in Social Sciences
European Socioeconomic and Political Studies
Hungarian Social, Economic and Educational Studies
The reform of decentralization in Belgium Recent developments of the Belgian territorial administration reflect the constitutional problems that have arisen in Belgium since the 1970 reform which reorganized the State by setting up three autonomous regions according to the cultural duality of the country, viz Flanders, Wallonia, and the bilingual region of Brussels. The regionalization of the State is followed up by another reform movement which aims at strengthening the local administrative level of municipalities : the association and federation of communes. There are hence at present five administrative levels : State, region, province, association-federation of communes, commune. This reform, which is still provisional, allows for a complex administrative organization, at times rather incoherent, comprising too many levels of decision-making with often rather vague or ill-defined terms of reference. This has brought about a trend towards simplification of institutions leading some critics to advocate an increase in powers, according to relevant matters, either at the central (State or region) or at the local level. Without contesting the good reasons for such a criticism, the author is neverthe-less reluctant to endorse such a position which would imply that the existence of the intermediary administrative level (the traditional provinces) would be open to question, whereas he feels that it has a role to play in that this is the adequate level to handle a number of managerial tasks.