The continuing Kurdish problem in Turkey after O¨calan's capture

This article sets out to critically explore an important dimension of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) recent bid for economic stability, namely the transparency requirements vis-à-vis emerging market economies. The article argues that this requirement symbolises an attempt to bolster ideological obligation to neoliberalism while progressing towards a certain form of legal obligation between states. This claim is developed by first identifying three facets that have undermined the economic stability of the global system: (1) the emergence of 'competition states'; (2) a non-hegemonic political economy; and (3) the reperipheralisation (or re-marginalisation) processes in the global South. After establishing this larger analytical backdrop, the article goes on to evaluate the Fund's transparency requirements as an attempt to preserve the status quo in the global political economy.     

Women in development: A critical analysis

In the early 1970s a general disenchantment with development efforts in Third World countries led to a search for alternative development strategies and a growing awareness that women, like the poor, were peripheral to the development efforts of major aid donors. In 1972 the United Nations designated 1975 as International Women's Year, highlighting the need to involve women in issues of economic development. During the past 20 years the 'women in development' approach, which seeks to recognise and integrate women in aid policies and programmes, has been incorporated into the aid practice of most development agencies. This paper traces the efforts of large aid agencies over the past two decades to integrate women into their aid programmes and discusses the main limitations and weaknesses of the WID approach.     

Javier Pérez de Cuellar

In recent decades the nature of large-scale violent conflict has fundamentally changed from an era of 'wars' to one that is characterised by complex political emergencies (CPEs). A number of conceptual shifts have occurred in the attempt to better understand the nature of these multiple 'small wars'. Classic analytical frameworks focusing on the relationships between states, military capacities and strategies and international political economy are being put aside for more eclectic frameworks. These draw heavily on social and cultural theory, blend different theoretical elements together to analyse different situations, relate conflict to development and point to the inherent unpredictability of conflict processes and outcomes. This paper reviews these contemporary approaches to conflict and peacebuilding and comments on their implications for external agencies seeking to resolve conflict.     

RHODES' CONTRIBUTION TO GOVERNANCE THEORY: PRAISE,CRITICISM AND THE FUTURE GOVERNANCE DEBATE

This article discusses Rod Rhodes' contribution to governance theory. Rod Rhodes' work on governance has been much quoted. He has contributed to setting a new governance agenda and to an ongoing governance debate. This debate has also had an impact on political practice. However, as this paper argues, Rhodes' definition of governance is problematic in that it is narrowly identified with networks, and it is not consistently applied. Rhodes' concept of governance remains too narrow for it to be able to include a comparative analysis of a variation of governance forms. In addition, the governance concept needs to be equipped with tools from political economy in order be able to incorporate important aspects of interests, power and conflict. The way forward for governance theory would seem to involve the inclusion of political economy analysis of context as it affects beliefs and dilemmas.     

Prostitution debates in France

Prostitution has been high on the French political agenda since the late 1990s, but the way in which it has been framed as a policy issue has undergone a radical change since the elections of 2002. This article compares competing definitions of prostitution as a political issue under the Jospin (1997-2002) and Raffarin (2002-) governments. It examines the abolitionist lobby, which dominated the debates under Jospin, joining forces with women's policy agencies to place prostitution on the policy agenda as a form of violence towards women. It discusses the changes in prostitution policy since 2002, focusing on the criminalization of soliciting and the construction of prostitutes as part-victim, part-criminal. It argues that the reframing of prostitution as a law and order issue has harsh consequences for the women in prostitution, but particularly for migrant women, who can be deported for the new offence of passive soliciting.     

Development Effectiveness and the Politics of Commitment

International aid agencies have experienced a ‘political turn’ over the past decade, with political economy analyses becoming increasingly numerous as a means to drive development effectiveness. Yet aid agencies have so far failed to shift their aid modalities in response. The problem lies in an inadequate conceptualisation of ‘politics’. Most donors continue to see development as a public good, rather than as the focus of contestation in a context of societal struggle, and consequently fail to take oppositional forces sufficiently seriously. This facilitates the misapplication of terms such as ‘partnership’ and ‘ownership’, contributing to failures in efforts to promote reform. A more truly political analysis of aid intervention entails two innovations: the use of structural analysis to distinguish between interests in reform; and the use of this distinction, in turn, to inform the practice of taking sides in political struggles. Case studies of international aid programmes in Cambodia and the Philippines illustrate how the failure of donors to take sides with particular reformers has resulted in lost opportunities to achieve concrete outcomes from development projects.     

Double-Edged Swords: Expert-Stakeholders as (Slightly) Unreliable Instruments for Control and Autonomy of Executive Agencies

Establishing executive agencies at arms's length of parent departments has caused widespread concern regarding their autonomy. In the Netherlands, ministries have established different types of boards to monitor agencies. Also, agencies have established an independent review commission. The different boards and the review commission can be looked at as expert stakeholders. This article poses the question whether and how expert stakeholders contribute to either the ministries' control on agencies or the autonomy of agencies. The article is based on qualitative research on six of the largest executive agencies. The article concludes that expert stakeholders act as double-edged swords: they contribute to control on agencies but also to their autonomy. Expert stakeholders improve the monitoring capacity of ministries and thus contribute to control. Conversely, they also strengthen agencies, as they provide political multiplicity and boost reputational uniqueness. The question of which of these prevails is mainly influenced by time, capture, and policy crises.     

Will the Digital Revolution Revolutionize Development? Drawing Together the Debate

This concluding article returns to the broad question that motivates this special issue ofStudies in Comparative International Development: Will the Digital Revolution constitute a revolution in development? In addressing this issue, we explore a number of common themes emphasized by the different contributions: the future of the North-South divide, the role of the state in promoting digital development, the transferability and adaptability of specific information and communication technologies, the challenges and potential benefits of controlling digital information, and the developmental effects of digitally enabled communities. We argue that the Digital Revolution's ultimate impact on development will depend on several key variables, including the extent to which these technologies foster within-country linkages among different sectors and socioeconomic classes; the degree to which new technological applications may be customized or transformed to advance local development; and the outcome of political contests between organized interests that are promoting different ways of organizing and governing the global digital economy. While it is difficult to fully assess a transformation while living in the midst of it, research on the social, political, and economic implications of the Digital Revolution will constitute an important agenda for development scholars in the years to come.     

Liberia: security challenges,development fundamentals

This research article argues that security challenges in post-conflict Liberia cannot be addressed effectively without synchronising current stabilisation policies with the implementation of development fundamentals. The article explores key strategic sectors of the Liberian economy and their impact on the security and development dimensions of peace building. The political economy of post-conflict Liberia has not structurally modified an economic model which relies on the concessionary system and the extraction of raw materials at the expense of developing productive sectors which could be used to secure sustainable livelihoods. It is suggested that a shift in the political economy pursued by national and international actors is needed to link current peacebuilding efforts to sustainable development processes; one policy measure recommended to achieve such a goal is enhanced support for land reform and small farmers' rights.     

Remapping development in light of globalisation: From a territorial to a social cartography

This article assesses the state of development studies in the wake of the 'impasse' that the field reached in the 1980s and suggests that the way forward is to 'deterritorialise' the concept of development. The first part critically assesses recent new perspectives and middle-range theories and focuses in particular on neoliberal and institutional approaches as hegemonic discourses. The myriad of new approaches offers limited and competing explanations for social change in the current epoch. The second part argues that globalisation, by modifying the reference points of macrosocial analysis, is responsible for development studies' paradigmatic quagmire. A sociology of national development is no longer tenable. The way out of the 'impasse' is to break with nation-state centred analysis by reconsidering the relationship between space and development and by reconceiving development based not on territory but on transnational social groups. Drawing on critical geographies and recent political economy theories of flexible accumulation and globalisation, it suggests that transnationalised labour markets exhibit an increasing heterogeneity across borders and that differentiated participation in these transnational labour markets in each locale comes to determine social development. The article emphasises the political nature of development theory and calls for a critical globalisation studies.     

The evolution of business – state interaction in Russia: From state capture to business capture?

This article discusses two basic strategies of Russian companies—isolation from, and close cooperation with the state. The author analyses several ways in which companies realise these strategies, drawing analogies with the ‘exit’ and ‘voice’ strategies suggested by A. Hirschman. It is shown that under the conditions of a weak state these strategies lead either to an expansion of the shadow economy or to ‘state capture’. Both the privatisation of the state and the lack of its privatisation result in budget crises as well as drastic social and political shocks, leading to calls for a ‘strong hand’ in the business community itself. However, as there is little political competition and the mechanisms of democratic control are weak, state consolidation takes place as a bureaucratic consolidation accompanied by new opportunities for informal ‘business capture’ by the authorities. Nevertheless, the high degree of openness of the economy and the remaining heterogeneity of political actors provide business with a wide range of possible strategies of interaction with the state. This article explores how these strategies are becoming more formal and public compared to the 1990s. Strategies of isolation from the state now take place as legal strategies of internationalisation. Cooperation strategies, on the other hand, currently seem to be more efficient when switching from the traditional lobbying of private interests to more rational and collective actions aimed at providing the necessary conditions for sustainable economic development.     

Post-Cold War Vietnam: stay low,learn, adapt and try to have fun – but what about the party?†

The paper compares political ideas and acts in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and in Communist Vietnam. It argues that the Gorbachev group, committed to progressive change, concluded that power granted to them by their position in the Soviet system needed to be eliminated, creating a ‘boot strap’ problem. To secure progressive change they had first to destroy their own power base. By contrast, the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) attempted, in the two decades after the emergence of a market economy in 1989–1991, to rule an increasingly open society through Soviet political institutions. By the late ‘noughties’ Vietnam faced a crisis of domestic sovereignty, with politics largely a matter of spoils, with policy largely irrelevant and unimplementable, and usually blocked by powerful interests. The paper argues that Hinsley's notion of the sovereignty issue makes this situation far easier to analyse. It argues that the Gorbachev group's analysis would have led to them predicting that the VCP's attempt to use Soviet institutions to rule over a globalising and increasingly open society with a market economy would lead to a crisis of political authority, and that they would have been correct. This leads to the counter-intuitive position that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a success ? in that it managed to solve a serious political problem, i.e. how to create the preconditions for a political system suited to a market economy in a relatively open society – and the VCP a failure.     

Contentions and contradictions of tourism as development option: The case of Kerala,India

Although the state of Kerala in India has been regarded as a 'model of development', its achievements may be unravelling thanks to a host of internal and external problems. The government and the bureaucracy now project tourism as 'an engine of growth'--an excellent source of foreign exchange and employment--to revive the local economy. Opposition to large-scale tourism projects by environmental and labour activists is often dealt with through undemocratic means. This article points to a less than sanguine role for tourism in the local economy and the dynamics that work to exaggerate tourism's share in the economy in an emerging context of governmental failure, political crisis and interest group consolidation. Lessons are drawn to revisit the debate on tourism and development.     

Poland and the international system: external influences on democratic consolidation

Democratization in Poland has been heavily influenced by agents and structures external to the Polish state. However, the influence of these external agencies is mediated through domestic social and political institutions, the state foremost among them. The Polish state's response to and interaction with external agencies is heavily conditioned by the very process of democratization which these agencies seek to influence. Thus, the impact of external agencies on the democratic consolidation process cannot be understood without reference to the influence that democratization has played in reshaping Poland's foreign relations. This paper explains the interaction between systemic and domestic factors in shaping the democratic consolidation process in Poland.     

Conceptualising technical change in the third world in the 1980s: An interpretive survey

Abstract

The third wave of democratisation has been accompanied by the spread of new institutions that allow citizens to directly participate in shaping policy outcomes. Leading international organisations, such as the World Bank and UN Habitat, have disseminated ‘best practice’ programmes identified with ‘good government’ policy reform efforts. One of the best known programmes, participatory budgeting (PB), was first adopted by an entrepreneurial government in 1989 as a means to promote social justice, accountability, and transparency. Yet, when these programmes are copied by policy advocates and pro forma adopters, the political pay-offs for government officials are smaller, which leads them to provide weaker support for the adopted policy. This article demonstrates that policy entrepreneurs are more likely to provide greater resources and support to innovative policies than their policy advocates and pro forma adopter counterparts due to the types of political payoffs available to them. The article concludes by considering when it might be most appropriate for international funding agencies and nongovernmental organisations to promote best practice policies.     

The Evolution of ‘Homegrown Conditionality’ in India: IMF Relations

This article explores the historical relationship between the Government of India (GOI) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a successful model for the ways in which a developing country can learn to work with and through multilateral organisations to promote economic and political development while sustaining democratic institutions and relative international political autonomy. In the mid-1960s, India's relations with the USA, IMF, and World Bank were strained after an attempt by these institutions to exert ‘leverage’ over Indian economic policies was exposed to parliamentary debate and the scrutiny of a free press. By the late 1970s, the GOI charted a new course in its interaction with the IMF. In 1981, India was awarded the largest IMF loan to a developing country up to that time. This article will evaluate India's economic reform strategy in the early 1980s and explain the development of the concept of ‘homegrown conditionality’ within the GOI.     

The significance of ethnicity in the Estonian return migration policy of the early 1920s

In this article the Estonian return migration policy is analyzed from the perspective of the return migrants' ethnicity. The time period of this study covers the most intensive phase of the state-organized return of emigrants to the newly established Republic of Estonia. The survey of attitudes of the Estonian authorities towards the return of emigrants with different ethnic backgrounds leads to the conclusions that the return of ethnic Estonians was preferred to the return of non-Estonians during the first years of Estonia's independence on both economic and political grounds. The political loyalty of non-Estonians was doubted in the administrative circles of Estonia which was especially the case with regard to the emigrants that had formerly belonged to the ruling power elites. The negative attitudes towards the return of non-Estonians were further aggravated by the crisis the Estonian economy was facing at that time. As a result, a parallel with the return migration policies of other new nation-states that emerged from the ruins of the Russian empire can be drawn.     

Joint Planning across the Health/Social Services Boundary since 1946

This article reviews the development of post-war policy on the joint planning of health and social services for older people in the context of broader theoretical ideas about inter-organisational collaboration. It identifies the lack of organisational homogeneity and the absence of domain consensus across the health/social services boundary as the main obstacles to progress. However, the article hrther suggests that, if these problems are to be properly understood, the broader policy context within which joint planning took place must also be investigated. In this regard, the article suggests that central government's attempts to encourage joint planning since the 1960s have repeatedly been hampered by distrust among local agencies of its more general policy intentions in this area.     

Armed Groups as Political Parties and Their Role in Electoral Politics: The Case of Hizballah

In recent decades, armed groups have shown an increased interest in creating political parties to take part in institutional politics. By using these political wings to participate in elections and win public office, some of them have gained enormous political power. However, despite the important real-world implications of this trend, the existing literature on the topic is still underdeveloped. This article contributes to a better understanding of this subject by examining the factors that motivate armed groups to set up a political wing and compete in elections and by assessing how political participation affects an armed group's strategic outlook. The hypotheses on political wing formation and development are tested by analyzing the decision-making patterns of Hizballah. The findings suggest that the political involvement of armed groups does not follow a linear development process from armed to political organization, but instead assumes cyclical patterns: political accommodation and armed struggle are chosen in turn in response to shifts in the relation and the internal balance of power between a given group's political and armed wings.