Blockchain Papers

Jhitsayarat Siripai, Chris Haywood

This article explores how Thai men construct and perform masculine identities through cryptocurrency trading, using the concept of crypto-masculinity to examine how digital finance becomes a site for gendered self-making. While existing scholarship on masculinity in financial contexts often centers on transnational business masculinities in Western corporate settings, little attention has been paid to how masculinity is enacted in decentralized, digital financial spaces, particularly in non-Western contexts. Addressing this gap, this article draws upon in-depth interviews with 21 male traders in Thailand to analyze how masculinity is shaped by the internal instability of masculinity and local cultural norms. This study identifies three key themes through which Thai men's subjectivity is negotiated: valorizing failure, homosociality, and ‘becoming a good Thai man.’ As a result, this article challenges assumptions about the naturalized links between men and finance, suggesting the need for further research on how exclusions within digital finances are taking place to better support equality on crypto platforms.

Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, Maria Ela L. Atienza

No abstract is available for this record.

Melchor Dioso, Jr. Wenceslao M. Paguia

In 1986, the Filipino people made history by overthrowing the 13-year Marcos dictatorship through a peaceful people power revolution. As a result, the country restored democracy and free elections through the 1987 Constitution which promised to empower citizens and Local Government Units (LGUs). Decentralization and local autonomy were further enhanced to put greater freedom and autonomous powers to local governments. However, it was the shortcomings of decentralization that paved the way for the interest of conversion to federalism. Thus, the present administration of the Philippine government has planned to convert the country's political system from democratic to federal. The study employed descriptive research design. The 58 local government officials in SAMARICA area were purposively selected. It includes the municipality of San Jose, Magsaysay, Rizal, and Calintaan in the province of Occidental Mindoro. The instrument underwent validity procedures and in the reliability test, it was found reliable. Result shows that the local government officials are middle-aged, male, and college graduate. In addition, they are the only politician in the family, members of the Liberal party, and councilors serving in the third class municipalities with short political experience. Lastly, officials have been attending seminars and trainings in the national level with few membership in organizations. The officials are "moderately perceptive" about the issues surrounding the proposed federal system of government. There is a significant difference in the respondents' perspectives when they are grouped based on age, the class of municipality, position, and attended seminars and trainings.

Amy Burge

The virginity test as a practise stretching back to at least the Middle Ages has, in recent western popular discourse, been firmly connected with cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Its appearance, then, in the western-authored sheikh romance is not entirely surprising. This chapter explores the representation of the virginity test in English Orientalist romances from two distinct historical moments: the late Middle Ages and the twenty-first century. This cross-period approach takes a long view of the virginity test, considering how current romance ideologies contrast with those of medieval romance. It antagonises exactly what is at stake in persistent reference to the virginity test in romance literature, focusing on their articulations of certainty and uncertainty, loss and possession. Through close readings of six popular sheikh romances featuring virgin heroines published by the genre’s biggest publisher, Harlequin Mills & Boon – Lynne Graham’s The Arabian Mistress (2001), Lucy Monroe’s The Sheikh’s Bartered Bride (2004), Penny Jordan’s Possessed by the Sheikh (2005), Sarah Morgan’s The Sultan’s Virgin Bride (2006), Lynne Graham’s The Desert Sheikh's Captive Wife (2007) and Chantelle Shaw’s At the Sheikh’s Bidding (2008) – alongside two popular English medieval romances – Bevis of Hampton (c.1300) and Floris and Blancheflur (c.1250) – the chapter considers how the test is positioned in each text and what this reveals about the importance of virginity. To put the testing in context, I first offer a brief overview of virginity testing in European culture. Next, I examine the role virginity plays in these romances, outlining their narrative importance. I then move to a focus on the test itself, indicating how testing for virginity is, in these romances, inherently unstable. In the two medieval romances, virginity test can be manipulated, highlighting the unreliability of the test to prove virginity. In sheikh romance, the ultimate virginity test for heroines is penetrative sex with the hero. Therefore, the moment at which the sheikh realises the heroine is a virgin is precisely the moment she ceases to be a virgin; any proof of virginity identified by penetration during a sex act can only be retrospective. Encoded in the very basis of the sex act as virginity test, then, is a fundamental ambiguity; as Kelly argues, ‘in the end, all tests for verifying virginity are inherently flawed’ (2000, 18). Yet while these retrospective, liminal tests might not be reliable as clear indicators of virginity, they do indicate what is at stake in the ‘loss’ of female virginity; ultimately, testing for virginity functions to secure male ownership of women as part of the romance genre’s celebration of a heteronormative gender system within which virginity is valued.

Ehtisham Ahmad

Introduction The 18 th Amendment to the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan disentangles overlapping spending responsibilities between the federation and provinces in a wide range of functions, devolving them to the latter. The legislation was also a reaction to relatively poor service delivery and living standards that had fallen continuously behind those in other countries in South Asia, and, indeed, are now lower than sub-Saharan Africa in most respects. The Musharraf government had used this argument for its own decentralization effort—delegating power to the districts and bypassing the political centers of power in the provinces. The 18 th Amendment reasserts the provinces' power and the associated political centers of power. It is designed to weaken the center, and correspondingly make it less attractive for the military to assume power by moving against an elected Prime Minister, as it has done periodically in Pakistan's history. But will this major reform work effectively and ensure higher living standards for all people in all the provinces? To what extent is the need for a national identity important in ensuring that the decentralization does not cause the federation to unravel or the overall delivery of public services to deteriorate and lead to greater exclusion of the poor? These are important issues and could well determine the fate of the 18 th Amendment as well as social stability in Pakistan. Section 2 outlines developments in theory linking governance and the decentralization process. The links between the two are critical. The main question is whether decentralized service provision can better provide for the poorer sections of society by utilizing information that may be available at the local level in tailoring services to local preferences and making access easier. How are these responsibilities financed? Does the process impede closer economic integration between the federating provinces? This chapter argues that positive approaches to intergovernmental reforms, as exemplified by the People's Republic of China, are perhaps more important for countries such as Pakistan that face significant structural challenges.

Thomas Kelly

PUTTING ON A PLAY IN AN UNDERWORLD COURTROOM: THE ‘‘MINGPAN’’ (INFERNAL JUDGMENT) SCENE IN TANG XIANZU’S MUDAN TING (PEONY PAVILION) THOMAS KELLY University of Chicago This article is an attempt to present a new way of thinking about courtroom trials in traditional Chinese theater. I look at how one playwright, Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616), used meta-theatrical devices to comically deflate and satirize judicial authority. At the same time, however, I argue that he used the scaffolding of the courtroom trial to experiment with theatrical scene composition in the chuanqi 傳奇 drama form. Tang not only used a theatrical idiom to parody the procedures of the courtroom, he looked to the format of the trial to stretch the representational possibilities of the dramatic medium. Questions of what constitutes juridical authority and what grounds an act of adjudication are equally pertinent to the role-playing of the courtroom and the illusionary domain of the stage in his most famous play, Mudan ting 牡丹亭 (The peony pavilion; preface dated 1598). I focus specifically on how these themes are treated in the complex courtroom scene in the twenty-third scene of the play, ‘‘Mingpan’’ 冥判 (Infernal judgment). The scene as Tang wrote it, I suggest, displays a heightened awareness of how dramatic representations of the law in both the world of the living and the dead can call into question the nature and artifice of the theater itself. THE ‘‘MINGPAN’’ SCENE IN TANG XIANZU’S MUDAN TING Tang Xianzu’s Mudan ting returns time and again to question the verifiability of characters’ testimonies and the disputed status of actions taken within the world of the play.1 The burden of proof falls on the two lovers, Du Liniang 杜麗娘 and Liu Mengmei 柳夢梅, who each must justify and corroborate their testimony before juridical authorities and also prove to family and friends who they are from Scene 16 on. Liu not only has to prove his credentials as a promising scholar to Miao Shunbin 苗舜賓 when the latter is inspecting jewels (Scene 21) and metropolitan 1 As Tina Lu has argued at length, questions of personal identity are at stake throughout the play: Are characters who they claim to be? Can we trust their outward appearances? These questions assume an added urgency in the underworld trial scene, which Lu only discusses in relation to issues of counterfeiting and slippage between material and nominal worth in the determination of monetary value (see Tina Lu, Persons, Roles and Minds: Identity in Peony Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan, [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001], pp. 106–13). CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 32.2 (December 2013): 132–155 # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2013 DOI: 10.1179/0193777413Z.00000000010 civil service examination candidates (Scene 41), he also has to prove that he is not guilty of robbing the grave of Liniang, the daughter of (the play’s chief patriarch) Du Bao 杜寶. Liu is arrested (Scene 50) and undergoes harsh interrogation and physical torture by Du Bao (Scene 53). It is not until the final scene (Scene 55) that Du Bao’s charges against him are finally dismissed by the emperor, even if this does not lead to Du Bao recognizing Liu as his son-in-law. Du Liniang never suffers judicial torture,2 but she also is required to repeatedly prove that she is who she claims to be and that her love—a love that both kills and resurrects her—is genuine. Although the final scene is initially presented as a contest between the counterclaims of Du Bao and Liu Mengmei, and it seems that Du Liniang only attends as a witness (she even arrives unescorted), after her arrival the key question becomes whether she is presently a ghost or not.3 Prior to that, however, Liniang is the main ‘‘defendant’’ in ‘‘Mingpan,’’ the play’s most elaborate and complex courtroom scene, a scene that appears almost half-way through the drama and marks an important turning point in the narrative.4 Earlier, Du Liniang encountered her lover in a dream (Scene 10), was unable to repeat the experience (Scene 12), became love-sick enough that she felt the need to paint and leave...

Edwin C. Du

This paper is about the “long fought for” self-autonomy in Muslim Mindanao as conceived in the peace agreement between the government and the Muslim organization and the prospect of federalizing the ARMM to achieve good governance and quality public service. The realization of self-autonomy can be actualized through federalization or the creation of the BangsaMoro federal state. Given the prevailing conditions of the ARMM as an autonomous region, is federalization politically viable? The focused area of examination is the ARMM specifically its political structure. Also considered in the analysis is the political culture like how patronage politics affects certain aspects of fiscal governance of the ARMM and its repercussion to the delivery of basic services to the people. The methodology used in this study is basically a single-country or area studies which is extrapolative for informational purposes but are also useful for comparison. It is also considered a case study where the unit of analysis is a specific region - in this study the ARMM region which is said to be a test case for the potential of federalism. The most significant outcome of this study is that federalism is politically viable in the ARMM in terms of its political structure of decentralization arguing from Brillantes Model that the next viable step to decentralization is federalization. However, there is much to be desired in actualizing decentralization and the need to enhance governance capabilities through accountability of public officials and transparency as well as providing solutions to the serious problem of patronage politics in the region.

Benedict S. Jimenez

Decentralization and autonomy can potentially increase public sector efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, as well as fulfill a conflict‐mitigating role. There is no guarantee, however, that decentralization, once implemented, would automatically produce the expected benefits. Using the case of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the Philippines, this article explores the importance of organizational capacity and the cultural, political, and social conditions in the region to explain the performance of the autonomous government. The article concludes that for autonomy to work, the administrative and institutional capacity of the regional government should be revitalized and the current politico‐administrative structure redesigned to accommodate local customs and practices and facilitate a consultative and collegial local governance arrangement.

Ursula Haskins Gonthier

In discussions of the French antislavery movement, it is customary to pinpoint Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois (1748), as opening the debate into the rights and wrongs of slavery which would continue in France throughout the second half of the eighteenth century.1 As is well known, in book 15 of L'Esprit des lois, Montesquieu shows slavery to be an institution condemned by natural and civil law. Chapter 5 of this book famously sees the author assume the persona of an advocate of slavery, and through skilful use of irony, succeed in undermining the conventional economic, religious and racial justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. Montesquieu's indictment of slavery encapsulates many of the arguments against the practice that would be developed and reformulated by French Enlightenment philosophers over the following decades. His influence is nowhere more evident than in the articles relating to slavery that appeared in the Encyclopédie. In the article ‘Esclavage’, for instance, the Chevalier de Jaucourt refers readers to Montesquieu's groundbreaking work in order to strengthen his denunciation of slavery: ‘Il ne sera pas difficile de démontrer que l'esclavage ne peut jamais être coloré par aucun motif raisonnable [...]; en un mot, rien au monde ne peut rendre l'esclavage légitime. [...] Voyez-en les preuves dans M. de Montesquieu.’ Whilst not seeking to challenge Montesquieu's status as the leading exponent of enlightened French arguments against slavery in the eighteenth century, I do however wish to bring to light the significance of the publication, in 1745 (three years before the appearance of L'Esprit des lois), of the first French translation of a work that had already done much to stimulate the antislavery debate on the English side of the Channel. First published in England in 1688, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave tells the story of an African prince who is captured by English slavers and transported to the then English colony of Surinam in South America. Having married a fellow slave and conceived a child, Oroonoko baulks at the prospect of his offspring being born into slavery. He therefore incites his fellow slaves to rebellion, and when their schemes prove unsuccessful, kills his wife and unborn child and attempts to take his own life. Recaptured by his white masters, Oroonoko is brutally executed in order that his fate might discourage further uprisings. Soon after publication, Behn's text was adapted for the stage by Thomas Southerne, whose tragedy Oroonoko was first performed in 1695. During the eighteenth century, as the abolitionist movement gained in strength, both Behn's text and Southerne's dramatisation were appropriated by British antislavery campaigners, and the figure of Oroonoko became a powerful emblem of the evils of the slave trade.2 At the same time, Oroonoko's influence also began to spread overseas. In 1745, Pierre-Antoine de La Place, best known as the first French translator of Shakespeare's plays, published his translation of Behn's text under the title Oronoko, ou le Prince nègre. It is interesting to note that La Place, who was a prolific translator of English drama (his collection entitled Le Théâtre anglois ran to eight volumes, published 1745-1749), chose to translate Behn's fictional Oroonoko rather than Southerne's play.3 La Place's comments in his preface, which includes a reference to Southerne's adaptation, suggest that he chose to translate Behn's text in order to exploit the device of the female narrator, a feature of Behn's original work that disappeared in its transition from fiction to drama. In La Place's eyes, the narration of the story by a female eyewitness, whom he identifies as Behn herself, lends an added romantic and sentimental dimension to the text, of which French audiences will be particularly sensible.4 La Place's translation of Behn's work quickly became a bestseller in France, going through seven editions before the end of the century.5 Mornet's analysis of the catalogues of French private libraries in the years 1750 to 1780 further reveals that Oroonoko ranks alongside works by Richardson and Fielding as one of the most popular English novels to appear in French translation during this period.6 Not only, therefore, did the appearance of Behn's text in France predate the first systematic denunciation of slavery by a French Enlightenment philosopher, but the work also commanded a significant readership at a time when, as Claudine Hunting has commented, the French philosophes were making ‘their first concerted efforts against slavery’.7 This evidence is an invitation to interrogate the relationship between Oroonoko and the French antislavery debate. To do this, I will begin by examining the work's reception in France, before going on to assess Oroonoko's status as an antislavery narrative, and the extent to which the text foreshadows the arguments against slavery deployed by the French philosophes. The reception of La Place's translation of Oroonoko by contemporary French commentators has been documented in detail by Edward Seeber, whose short article, despite its age, remains the most comprehensive study of the impact of Behn's work on French audiences.8 Seeber's survey reveals that any mention of Oroonoko by French commentators is generally accompanied by a reflection as to the historical truth of the narrative. As La Place emphasises in the preface to his translation, Behn claims in the text to have witnessed the events she records during a period of residence in Surinam as a young woman. This claim is frequently reported by French reviewers of the text, as is the suspicion that the author's relations with the African prince went beyond disinterested humanitarianism. Typical of this tendency is Fréron's review in L'Année littéraire for 1756, written in response to the publication of a second edition of La Place's translation. This review emphasises the factual rather than the fictional dimension of the text, drawing attention to both the author's status as an eyewitness, and to Oroonoko's significance as a historical figure: ‘Ce fut pendant son séjour en Amérique qu'Astrea[Aphra Behn] témoin oculaire des aventures d'Oronoko, en composa l'histoire. [...] Le caractère d'Oronoko est un des plus nobles & des plus fermes que j'aye rencontrés dans l'Histoire & même dans les Romans.’9 Fréron's insistence on the truth of the narrative serves to reinforce the moral crux of the story, which he identifies as the contrast between the noble, heroic behaviour of the black African protagonist, struggling to achieve freedom for himself, his family and his people; and the cowardice and brutality of his white English masters. Playing on the binary oppositions between black and white, vice and virtue, Fréron presents Oroonoko to French readers as a challenge to traditional stereotypes: Lisez cet ouvrage en entier, [...] il vous attachera, il vous remuera, il vous attendrira. Vous y trouverez de l'intérêt, des situations, des faits, des épisodes liés à l'objet principal, des traits affreux de noirceur, de perfidie & d'inhumanité, mais tempérés par des couleurs douces de l'amour le plus tendre & le plus fidèle, & par de grands sentiments d'honneur, de vertu, de courage & de générosité.10 Fréron's comments are particularly worthy of note because L'Année littéraire was the most widely read literary periodical of its time, and its author is credited with wielding considerable influence over French public opinion.11 Interestingly, the review also pinpoints several factors which may account for the popularity of Behn's text in France. Firstly, as is suggested by the use of the terms ‘honneur’, ‘vertu’, ‘courage’ and ‘noble’ in the previous quotation, Fréron roots Oroonoko in a tradition of heroic romance that would have been familiar to French audiences. Indeed, this aspect of the text is emphasised by La Place in the preface to his translation, where he couples Behn's name with that of several famous French romancières of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, declaring Oroonoko to be the work ‘d'une plume aussi célèbre, en Angleterre, que celle des Villedieu, des Scudéri, & des Lussan, l'est en France’.12 Significantly, however, Fréron's review suggests that Oroonoko should be read as a conte philosophique rather than as a roman galant. Discussing the depiction of Oroonoko's youth at the beginning of the novel, Fréron comments on the African prince's education by a dissident Frenchman, whose radical ideas had made him unwelcome in France. This tutor, described by Fréron as an ‘homme d'esprit’, provided Oroonoko with ‘des leçons de morale & une idée des Arts & des Sciences de l'Europe’.13 In the novel, it is clear that this education results in the religious scepticism that is one of Oroonoko's distinctive characteristics, and which is reinforced when he is captured by a white slave trader. This trader gives Oroonoko his word as a Christian that he will be treated well, only to sell him to a notoriously cruel plantation owner in Surinam. Fréron quotes in his review Oroonoko's final address to his captor: ‘Adieu, Monsieur; ce que je vais souffrir est peu de chose en comparaison des lumières que vous me faites acquérir. J'apprend au moins le fond que l'on doit faire sur vos pareils & sur le Dieu au nom duquel vous avez juré.’14 This association of the term ‘lumières' with Oroonoko's dismissal of Christian morality, establishes a clear link between the philosophical import of Behn's work and the ideas of the French Enlightenment; a link further reinforced by Fréron's comment, elsewhere in the review, that certain scenes in the text recall Voltaire's tragedy L'Orphelin de la Chine (1755).15 Fréron's review thus suggests that Oroonoko was read in eighteenth-century France as a philosophical novel with an enlightened message. This message emerges even more clearly from the analysis of the work included in the article on Aphra Behn that appeared in the first volume of Chaufepié's Nouveau Dictionnaire historique et critique (1750-1756), a homage to and continuation of Pierre Bayle's famous work. While Seeber credits Chaufepié himself with the authorship of the long article in praise of Behn's writing that appears in the dictionary, closer examination has led me to question this attribution.16 In fact, when compiling his Nouveau Dictionnaire, Chaufepié extracted material from the most recent English translation of Bayle's dictionary, published 1734-1741.17 The editors of this translation had added new entries concerning the life and work of English literary figures who were deemed to have continued Bayle's tradition of radical critical thinking. Among was Aphra The English article to Behn was then by Chaufepié for in his Nouveau Dictionnaire, and into the of Oroonoko credited with fond & de which him worthy of the and the message of Behn's work is into the de dans To the of Chaufepié's article, which appeared in be to the of racial in the volume of published in The French a long of this volume to the dans that et la plus de est celle de la which is in to des Having the of the African the to his les [...] y en a même être en ne jamais au de que ne à Whilst the of the clearly between racial he to the white at the and the black African at the his comments appear to a relationship between characteristics, and the of black Africans. While recent suggests that of this did not in the of the eighteenth century, it would appear that a on as terms of be in French before this Indeed, in the French des a review of account of his in and in which the recent of the and of African in an to de The results of to the that une de celle des While the terms and were at this time, and their the of comments is It appears in the first half of the eighteenth century, French the that in a between black and white in Oroonoko as of the that de dans Chaufepié's article on Aphra Behn the of contemporary French It also that the institution of slavery, which was on a that which made for and this African slaves had the seventeenth been as by the French and were to To as did Chaufepié's article, that despite in between slaves and masters, was thus to conventional not arguments in of slavery. Indeed, French readers of the Nouveau Dictionnaire are to slavery as an and The analysis of Oroonoko with a reference to a by the protagonist, in which Oroonoko his and to that his child will be born a Oroonoko is to with de la doit être & doit y doit This analysis of of Oroonoko by French eighteenth-century commentators reveals that do appear to be for the work with the antislavery debate in Enlightenment France. when it to the of the work it is to a new in literary which to Behn's text in a as to its status as an antislavery narrative. as and have to Oroonoko's his education by an enlightened Frenchman, and his status as a that Behn not slavery in the enslavement of an African whose him from his scepticism is even more in the of La Place's translation of Behn's work. and the in which La Place any antislavery message in Behn's original text, making significant in with the of the roman La Place the of the novel that Oroonoko and his wife and are by a a of heroic the are a to in for which Oroonoko to the colony with slaves from his In of however, it be that certain of La Place's translation of Behn's work the arguments by the philosophes in their against slavery. The most of antislavery in the text be in Oroonoko's address to his fellow slaves on the of their This is from Behn's original Interestingly, La Place a in which Oroonoko his to the slaves on the le de en à dans est à un doit The of this which is from the English that not La Place's to the text had the of its as an indictment of slavery. Oroonoko's long is to his fellow slaves of the evils of the slave and thus to him in the He a of powerful arguments against slavery, declaring that the slave of both his and ‘Il les couleurs les plus les à de plus à des des en ou la he slavery has any in de être He reveals the also the and plantation who the of a la les des ce des les plus de in this he the white to be of their à une des de sur and most he the slaves that their is an not only to and to their masters, but also to the of dans vous [...] the of the narrative, are to that Oroonoko both his and his to his radical French when that Behn's original text was published in 1688, it clear that this is in the of In Oroonoko's with the on and freedom in the work of and Indeed, as to the evident between Oroonoko's and the antislavery arguments by the it is to the extent to which French philosophers as Montesquieu and were by the of the English his Montesquieu in was with the of and this is evident in his denunciation of slavery in book 15 of L'Esprit des lois, which with a of the of slavery on both slaves and [...] au à à ne peut rien faire par à de à à les Having thus Oroonoko's as to the of virtue, Montesquieu then several to an to the African prince's question the for slavery, de l'esclavage [...] est au de les [...] est aussi au civil It is to note that Oroonoko's was not only an in of but also an to The an of slave in the French which led to in France the of a comments that La Place on in his translation of Behn's more than the English author had done on the of that over La Place's of Oroonoko dans on est de les dans de le des de des The translator was in a to comments than Behn had In the on an as slaves their by to by the the had to to The philosophes who against slavery appear to have that the of slave was a that work in their In book 15 of L'Esprit des lois, Montesquieu a to the He the of the slave who is to his the of and une il même pas [...] il que son a une peut et que la est de ne plus de la des que de des et de ne [...] ne pas être par la des In his to his fellow Oroonoko emphasises the are treated des and made to à des des Montesquieu this declaring that slavery to des He also a for Oroonoko's to his and shows slave to be the of The in which slaves were by both slave and the is a in the Enlightenment denunciation of slavery. on the of slaves in the French in the edition of his sur les Dieu et on les des de He thus the of the French who that slaves be to their status as and as for to as In Voltaire's a slave in the of his who also that his white him a fellow than an the attention to the that it is to with the of not only by figures as but also the les & les moins que les me les que et ne pas mais de vous ne peut pas en plus It is also that this of in the colony in which the of Oroonoko is In the slave by has to and has as a as a his is the of a and a This Oroonoko's by his in Behn's original English text, where the are during his this suggests a to Behn's text on the of The French arguments against slavery their in the articles concerning slavery in the Encyclopédie. As have in the article ‘Esclavage’, the Chevalier de Jaucourt Montesquieu's as the of his of the He the many arguments against slavery made in L'Esprit des lois, and with his more on Montesquieu's claim that slavery is a Jaucourt terms that are to in La Place's translation of Oroonoko's declaring pas un le mais même est arguments in his article des further made by Oroonoko, for he the of in & ne un de ne être à aucun the question of slave rebellion, the of the of slavery, Jaucourt that slavery is an a slave has to He that the for slave with the ‘Il [...] la ne doit à une & par les de & de As Behn's Oroonoko first appeared in French years before the publication of L'Esprit des lois the into the French antislavery debate. it is an to claim that Behn's work had a influence on this it is to note despite La Place's to the text, the French translation of Oroonoko several powerful arguments against slavery particularly in the to his fellow slaves and that same arguments also be in the of the French philosophes. It is to that La Place, by Behn's work into a heroic Oroonoko in a of have the of Oroonoko, who is of and has a is as the of a French roman galant. La Place thus the and racial he a more response to the Discussing slavery in des the of a on the eighteenth-century of he that the public is to with the fate of African même des dans le & au a que la des ne les on les on les on les & & à ne jamais shows to be the against slavery have both a sentimental and a La Place's translation of Oroonoko clearly a to the The of Oroonoko in is in a as to Indeed, the response of the female at is the text in the of the female instance, first with Oroonoko, the to been La Place's preface to his translation further emphasises this for he comments that the in which the work is written that the author pas au de son As however, the of a heroic slave was not to readers of the evils of the in the also had to be This is in the of enlightened as in his article des the that would in stimulate the as slaves would work more and be more la les de therefore that La Place's translation of Behn's Oroonoko might be the sentimental side of the French antislavery which was by the more of the philosophes. This was not Oroonoko's only to French Enlightenment Interestingly, the translation of Behn's text not only the arguments to be deployed in the French antislavery but also to have to the of England as a of and that was by many French Enlightenment most famously by Montesquieu in book of L'Esprit des In the century, at the time when La Place's translation of Behn's work England and France were in a for in the and for of the slave in which the English were to prove In this it might have been that Behn's depiction of English slave and in and would have been to that but the to have As was La Place not only Behn's Oroonoko, but also Shakespeare's plays, and in his sur le Théâtre his of Oroonoko, in 1745, he to French the brutality and of the by the of La Place on of Shakespeare's work to prove that [...] to have his translation of Oroonoko, for in the French of Behn's the cruel who is for and the slaves is not an as in Behn's original text, but a The who Oroonoko and his family their however, remains it appears that Behn's text was as a of English humanitarianism. The Le in his also published in 1745, of Thomas Southerne's of Behn's Oroonoko performed on the He of the y a des traits les plus & les plus la de les & à des celle le plus It should be evident that is a to be made between Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and the antislavery debate in eighteenth-century France. contemporary of the work reveals that the ideas in the text were as being to by French Enlightenment a which appears when one the antislavery arguments in Oroonoko with the work of Montesquieu and the that the story of Oroonoko was also read as the English in a is a of the significant by the French antislavery movement to the ideas and of the English it is that the of in Behn's work through the of and serves to the and of the arguments made against slavery by the French philosophes. The of this aspect of French Enlightenment has to extent been by the recent work of particularly the who has that the French of the the as well as the to interrogate and the traditional critical the denunciation of slavery was in of but his in the of and as much has of Behn's Oroonoko the of slavery in the text is the work had its to to the antislavery It to me that be to the of the French whose on slavery might also be read as in and a powerful in the French for At it is to of the on slavery when with a text as article des in the where slavery is condemned as an institution la la les & les de la

Charisma Malixi

This study proceeds from the obvious assumption that without revenue powers and expendi-ture autonomy any devolution of functions on local governments remains hollow. Without resources local self-government is an exercise without much scope for decision-making. But even if local governments do have adequate revenue powers, their fiscal autonomy may be curtailed by utterly restrictive and, often Byzantine, administrative regulations of the central state, erratic interventions by the central government and – for fear of being not returned to office in future elections - a lack of will among local leaders to utilize the revenue powers vested in local authorities. 
<br>\tAlthough there is a plethora of literature on decentralization in the Philippines, the literature reflects what Linn,48 Smoke,49 and Smoke, Martinez-Vasquez and Peterson 50 have deplored elsewhere in relation to fiscal decentralization in more general terms: there is not much systematic research on how the Local Government Code of 1991 affected the fiscal capabilities of local governments. Most of the decentralization literature stands in the tradi-tion of the old institutionalism 51 and thus strongly centers on legal-institutional aspects and the historical evolution of decentralization in the Philippines. The few serious studies are by now dated 52 or are difficult to access because they are studies commissioned by bilateral and multilateral donor organizations.53 
<br>\tThe main objective of this study is thus to explore as to what extent in the Philip-pines the devolution of functions has been accompanied by an adequate allocation of re-sources to local governments. Local fiscal capacities are thus considered as the litmus test for the success of decentralization reforms in the Philippines. 
<br>This dissertation is organized into five parts. Chapter 1 discusses the theoretical foun-dation of decentralization as well as the study’s significance, scope and limitations, and methodology. In particular, the theoretical foundation lays down the debate between centrali-zation and decentralization as well as the differing contexts – political and economic - of de-centralization. The research question and the study’s possible contribution were also ex-plained in this chapter.
<br>Chapter 2 describes the Philippines’ political-legal structure and its local government system. It also briefly outlines the major changes brought about by the Local Government Code of 1991, the most extensive reform legislation on local governments in the country’s history. 
<br>Chapter 3 presents the overall or macro-view of decentralization in the Philippines. First, decentralization and local autonomy were explained using the Local Government Code of 1991 wherein the new Code became a catalyst to personnel, functional and fiscal decen-tralization. Second, the local financing structure was described by presenting the trends and dynamics between the central and local governments in obtaining the consolidated LGU in-come and expenditures from 1985 (pre-LGC of 1991) until 2001 (after the passage of the LGC of 1991). Third, the Local Government Code and the LGU Performance were evaluated using the results of the Local Productivity and Performance Measurement System (LPPMS) as a self-assessment tool. 
<br>Chapter 4 presents the case studies in Bataan and Pampanga on fund sourcing as well as the performance of the Central Luzon Region in local fiscal administration. The case studies will show the experiences of the provinces, cities and municipalities in resource mobilization under the regime of decentralization. This Chapter will also show the impact of inflation or increase in prices in the increase in income on whether the inflation to increase in income leads to real growth in a particular locality. 
<br>Chapter 5 provides an analysis of the results and observations of the study.

Weena Gera

Across the broad issues of decentralized governance in the Philippines, the process of fiscal decentralization continues to require thoroughgoing analysis vis-à-vis the incessant protests against purportedly unfair distribution and use of the country’s fiscal resources. This paper analyzes the institutional framework defining the country’s intergovernmental fiscal relations that would highlight the critical role of central-local political structures in shaping fiscal decentralization. It examines how the policy standardization, resource coordination and allocation, and monitoring and evaluation in the country’s intergovernmental finance affect the distribution, generation and use of fiscal resources. Key issues noted include : 1) limited devolution of budget; 2) constrained intergovernmental fiscal transfer system (insufficient and unlawful allocation of funds; lack of transparency and exercise of discretionary powers in the use of fiscal resources); and 3) low levels of local revenue generation. These issues intersect along a contradiction of powers between the local and central government politicians which predominates in an intergovernmental fiscal structure evaluated in this study as lacking in meaningful institutionalization. The basic paradigm of this paper is based on the assumption that decentralization as a political process can best be operated within the framework of centrally-led institutionalization.

W.G. Wolters

The position of local and provincial elites in the Philippines has changed in character. At the beginning of the century the landed elite was relatively autonomous, keeping the state weak and using it to reinforce its position. Since the 1950s a new elite of mercantile entrepreneurs has emerged, dependent on state credit and political protection. Under the martial law regime in the 1970s the state ceased to be an extension of regional elites and acquired the features of a separate level of organization. The transition to the Aquino administration has led to some degree of decentralization. However, provincial politicians are more than ever interested in finding their slot in the central state apparatus.