Contribution of agriculture in economic growth: A case study of West Bengal (India)

Economists have argued that role of agriculture is pivotal for economic development of the nation. Worldwide studies have shown that agriculture sector is more effective in reducing hunger and poverty than other sectors. This study is an attempt to ascertain the importance of agriculture in the economic growth of West Bengal. Agriculture, being the source of livelihood and supplier of raw material to various industries, triggers economic growth of the nation. This paper exhibits how agriculture has contributed to West Bengal's economic excellence using empirical data and a cointegration analysis. The role of agriculture is examined on four contributions: (a) product contribution (forward linkage), (b) market contribution (backward linkage), (c) factor contribution, and (d) foreign exchange contribution. The composition and growth of the sectors and its association with other sectors is analyzed using time series analysis. Findings of the study revealed that agriculture sector has appeared as an important contributor to drive West Bengal economic growth even after declining share in gross state domestic product over the years. Empirical analysis reveals that agriculture is having long run causal linkages with industry, services, and overall economic growth in West Bengal.     

Corruption,Trust and their Public Sector Consequences: Introduction to the Special Edition

Abstract

Corruption and trust are two important determinants of the quality of public sectors. Empirical studies in different literatures suggest that corruption and trust have effects on factors such as economic growth, the quality of democratic institutions, life quality, the size and effectiveness of the public sector and much more. The purpose of this special issue – one that goes to the heart of the comparative policy ethos which is central to the journal's mission – is to draw on a number of country examples to shed light on the state of the literature on the connection between corruption and trust. The aim is to show that these two concepts are highly relevant to each other, and that their interconnections are important to understand the public sector consequences of corruption and trust. By focusing on these concepts, we hope that this special issue can pave the road for further comparative research.     

Going out: China's food security from Southeast Asia

Abstract

China's new five-year plan recognised the looming insecurity in its agricultural sector. On the one hand, the country faces a diminishing arable land supply; on the other, a large population with rapidly increasing diets. Although large-scale trade and investment in this sector has been developing since the mid 1990s between China and a variety of African states, it is a relatively new addition to the more established China-Southeast Asian economic relationship. This article seeks to explore the impact that China's agricultural investments are having on two Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia and the Philippines – where there has been a marked increase in activities by Chinese firms in agricultural produce. The findings from these two case studies – and a series of smaller studies of the situation in other regional states – are used as a benchmark to clarify some of the consequences of China's agricultural investment from Southeast Asia for regional food security.     

Building politics: The British Embassy Peking, 1949–1992

Abstract

Timor-Leste is among the youngest nations in the world. It began its independence under difficult circumstances: poverty is widespread, education is poor, the industrial sector is non-existent, and political turbulence is on the rise. On the positive side, future oil revenues are predicted to be substantial, which could potentially be a great help in Timor-Leste's struggle for development. This paper examines critically the possibility for Timor-Leste to use oil revenues to achieve economic development. It describes how difficult it is to estimate the future revenues because of volatile prices, territorial disputes, and insufficient seismological mapping. It continues with a discussion of the ‘resource curse’ – the difficulty of combining natural resources with economic development. Moreover, the particular challenges for Timor-Leste's development are dealt with at some length, as are possible ways to avoid the resource curse.     

Unfree labour and adverse incorporation in the global economy: comparative perspectives on Brazil and India

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of unfree labour in the contemporary global economy, the processes by which it is generated, and its connections with poverty and vulnerability. I challenge dominant ‘residual’ views of unfree labour as either external to global economic activity or occurring solely within small-scale, localized or non-market contexts. Instead, I contend that unfree labour needs to be understood in ‘relational’ terms as a particular form of ‘adverse incorporation’ in the global economy. This form of adverse incorporation is constituted through the circular interaction between, on the one hand, the functioning of the global productive economy and associated labour markets, and, on the other, the social relations of poverty which give rise to vulnerability and to unfree labour. I draw throughout on original empirical research conducted on ‘slave labour’ in Brazilian agriculture and child labour in the Delhi garments sector.     

Alternative action organizations across different welfare and third sector regimes during hard economic times

ABSTRACT

Since 2008, the international economic and financial crisis has been affecting the living and working conditions of European citizens in different ways and scope. Yet, the pattern is of rising unemployment, social deprivation and poverty, cuts in health, education and social security budgets. These negative socio-economic conditions have led to major transformations in collective responses, which, among others, take place through Alternative Action Organisations (AAOs). The specific organizations carry out non-mainstream activities that primarily target the economic and the social well-being of citizens, including their basic needs, health and lifestyles. Using quantitative data from the LIVEWHAT project and drawing on social origins theory and resource mobilization theory, the article investigates AAOs’ main characteristics across four European countries that have been differently affected from the recent recession as well as belong to different welfare state and third sector regimes, including Germany, Greece, Sweden and Poland. The findings stress the importance of considering the particular combinations of the welfare state and third sector regimes as well as the severity of the experienced economic crisis in understating the variation in AAOs’ main features under a comparative perspective.     

The story of two administrative states: state capacity in Hong Kong and Singapore

Abstract

Hong Kong and Singapore are both typical administrative states with an efficient administration and a vibrant market, which had achieved rapid economic growth in the past decades. This article examines the trajectory of their state capacity, highlighting recent problems and challenges. Based on a conceptual framework that captures and links up four dimensions – namely polity, bureaucracy, economy and civil society – their commonalities and differences in response are discussed. Their experience should be of particular relevance to transitional authoritarian states in Asia such as China, which faces similar challenges to reform in the arenas of politics, administration, economics and society.     

Sectoral reallocation, distributional coalitions and the welfare state as determinants of economic growth rates in industrialized democracies

Abstract. This paper investigates three propositions about economic growth. It rejects the proposition that differences in the size of the agricultural sector or in opportunities to reallocate resources from this sector to other sectors of the economy significantly contribute to the explanation of differential growth rates among industrialized democracies. It supports Olson's proposition that long lasting democracies suffer from an accumulation of distributional coalitions whose rent-seeking activities retard economic growth. It also supports the proposition that the welfare state contributes to economic decline. Technically, this paper applies cross-sectional and pooled regression analyses of growth rates on employment in agriculture as a percentage of civilian employment, age of democracy, and social security transfers as a percentage of GDP. Data refer to the 1960–82 period and 19 nations.     

Interrogating sub-Saharan Africa's high economic growth rate and low poverty reduction rate: A poverty paradox?

Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) high economic growth coincides with an increase in the level of poverty. In a panel of 40 SSA countries over a 30-year period, while accounting for the potential spillover effect of poverty in the region. The study found that economic growth recorded over the years has not translated to poverty reduction, particularly, in resource-rich economies of SSA. The result also shows that income inequality worsens the effect of economic growth on poverty and that the poverty-reducing effectiveness of growth varies considerably across sectors, across space, and over time. The research findings suggest that governments across the region, particularly, in oil-exporting countries in SSA must diversify the economy away from oil (toward the service sector) to reduce poverty in the region.     

Understanding the changing fortunes of metropolitan neighborhoods, 1980 to 1990

Abstract

This article develops a model that relates decadal changes in neighborhood poverty rates to metropolitan‐wide economic changes and the neighborhood's demographic profile, predetermined poverty rate, and locational characteristics. The model is estimated for the 1980–1990 period using metropolitan census tracts as proxies for neighborhoods. This national sample of tracts is stratified into predominantly white, African‐American, Hispanic, and mixed subsamples.

Results indicate that only a few variables consistently predict growth in neighborhood poverty: overall job availability; the age composition of neighborhood residents; the proportion of nonmarried households; and the neighborhood's 1979 poverty rate. Other variables have distinctly different coefficients depending on the racial‐ethnic subsample. These coefficients include segregation, welfare benefits, the location of manufacturing employment, and availability of automobiles. We conclude that studies that focus solely on African‐American poverty neighborhoods fail to recognize common patterns across all neighborhoods and to discern unique features of neighborhoods inhabited predominantly by non‐African Americans.     

Engineers versus managers: experts,market-making and state-building in Putin's Russia

Abstract

Market-making and state-building are mutually reinforcing processes. This paper documents the role played in these processes by two groups of experts in Russia's electricity sector: technical experts and managerially trained experts. I develop two arguments: (1) a shift in the relative power positions of these two groups was a constitutive element of the marketization and liberalization of the electricity sector. The victory of the managerial experts made assets legible and therefore ‘value-able’. (2) the paper demonstrates that the promotion of managerial experts at the expense of technical experts was a deeply political transformation, as it involved the replacement of a well-established, well-connected group of incumbent political actors. More specifically, I show how the promotion of managerial experts at the expense of technical experts helped the federal government of President Putin eliminate one of the main challengers to its ability to regulate economic activity from the centre – regional governors.     

Demographic dynamism and metropolitan change: Comparing Los Angeles,New York,Chicago, and Washington,DC

Abstract

The fluid dimensions of demographic status—age, career progression over time, geographic redistribution, and growing duration of residence—have not been sufficiently recognized in urban theory and policy. Demographic dynamism deserves special attention because it is through the presumed consequences for people that we judge the desirability of economic, political, and physical changes in a city. To explore the magnitude and significance of these issues, population dynamics and associated poverty and homeownership trends in four major metropolitan regions are compared.

Los Angeles may be changing more rapidly, but its dynamics only accentuate trends under way elsewhere. Rising proportions of the population that are neither in the white “majority” nor black “minority,” the low proportion of longtime residents, and the new challenge of immigration call into question fundamental assumptions about links between people and urban policy. The meaning of both poverty trends and homeownership attainments must be reassessed.     

So far so good? Tracking the poverty eradication goal of SDGs in Kenya,Nigeria, and South Africa

This paper tracks the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals in selected countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, namely, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The study assesses economic indices such as GDP growth, employment, and poverty rate of each country to understand the present performance of these countries and the feasibility of it attaining the first goal of the Sustainable Development Goals. Considering the current economic outlook and trajectory of these countries, eradicating poverty in 2030 is highly unlikely, unless drastic measures are taken. GDP growth in Kenya is currently low, whereas the poverty and the unemployment rate are very high. Nigeria still battles with economic recovery following the recession since 2016 and a soaring poverty level. Equally, South Africa is saddled with the problem of rising poverty, unemployment, and corruption. The study recommends that cooperation between government, civil society, and the private sector needs to be drastically improved and promptly to meet the poverty eradication goal by 2030.     

Local Resilience and the Reconstruction of Social Institutions: Recovery,Maintenance and Transformation of Buddhist Sangha in Post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia

ABSTRACT

This article explores how local resilience is realised in post-conflict reconstruction, by examining the redevelopment of Buddhist institutions in Cambodia. It firstly proposes three forms of resilience that were significant in the local level peacebuilding practice in the country – recovery, maintenance and transformation – and examines the process by which each form of resilience was materialised from the perspectives of local communities. Moreover, this study highlights two factors that determined the development of local resilience: ontological security and local leadership structure. Based on the empirical findings, this study discusses the conceptual and theoretical implications of such elements of resilient peacebuilding.     

The gender politics of economic competitiveness in Malaysia's transition to a knowledge economy

Abstract

Many academic commentators have pointed to how the widening and deepening of a neoliberal reform agenda in Southeast Asia has brought about the end of developmental forms of state governance and the emergence of less directly market interventionist states pursuing economic ‘competitiveness’. In this paper, I note how notions of competitiveness are increasingly fused with ideas regarding the contribution of gender equity and women's empowerment to national economic success. However, drawing upon a case study of Malaysia, this paper highlights how government policies stressing both the marketisation of social reproduction and the need to expand women's productive roles are constantly brought into tension with embedded social structures. Such an emphasis is essential to any understanding of the role of the Malaysian state in economic development – a role that has been fundamentally shaped by a localised politics of ethnicity. The paper draws upon examples from government policy-making that conceptualise women as key workers in the emerging knowledge-driven economy and as microentrepreneurs driving pro-poor economic growth and illustrates how such policies are brought into tension with traditionalist discourses concerning the appropriate role of women in society.     

Asymmetrical rivalry between China and Japan in Africa: to what extent has Sino-Japan rivalry become a global phenomenon?

Abstract

To what extent is China–Japan rivalry a global phenomenon, and what is the nature of the rivalry they engage in outside their own region? Literature on Sino-Japanese rivalry abounds, but it pays scant attention to the relevance of the rivalry outside East Asia. This article argues that Sino-Japanese rivalry has indeed become a global phenomenon, that various forms of the rivalry are evident in Africa, and that they are mostly of an asymmetrical nature. Quantitatively, China’s contribution to Africa is far greater than that of Japan, with the exception of foreign direct investment (FDI). Qualitatively, though, Japan has a stronger sense of the rivalry than China has, revealing a psychological aspect to the asymmetry as well. Contextually, the types of activity that Chinese and Japanese actors carry out in Africa are not necessarily the same, which makes the rivalry all the more asymmetrical. The rivalry has become more apparent recently, not only because of the rise of China but also because of a change in the meaning of ‘Africa’ – from a region of ‘poverty’ and ‘hunger’ to a region of ‘economic opportunities’. That said, Africa – to a greater or lesser degree in each of its countries – still suffers from conflict and instability. As a result, the ability of Japan and China to exert power and influence throughout Africa is somewhat restricted.     

War and other insecurities in East Asia: what the security studies field does and does not tell us

Abstract

Terrorism has become a challenge to which Southeast Asian studies need to respond. This article scrutinizes political and economic developments in regard to democracy and poverty in Southeast Asia, in particular the degree of change, and studies their influence on terrorism. The main question being asked here is whether external support for political and economic development could contribute to the Southeast Asian battle against terrorism. At the same time, this article seeks ways in which the international community, especially Europe, could support and participate in Southeast Asian efforts to address the root causes of terrorism. Finally, a global quantitative analysis of relevant factors is undertaken, and global conclusions are related to the developments and processes observed in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. On the basis of the analysis, it can be established that some of the root causes of terrorism are indeed related to poverty and the lack of democracy. While it is clear that terrorist strategies to address these grievances by targeting innocent civilians are unacceptable, grievances related to poverty and the lack of democracy are perfectly legitimate. It seems that in order to inhibit individual terrorist motivations, democratization of political systems would do some good. However, the main economic and political grievances that are associated with the growth of terrorism are related to transnational communities. Thus, while Southeast Asian countries should continue to develop and democratize, they should also work together with the international community to democratize the international structures of governance.     

Cursed resources,or articulations of economic theory in the Gulf of Guinea

Abstract

Economic experiments, or attempts to shape national and local economies with the help of economic theory, have been typical of post-war development efforts. Economic sociologists have explored the role of such experiments to demonstrate how economics – as a set of practices, ideas and technologies – enacts its worlds. This paper examines one such case of high-powered economic theory and its enactment in an emergent West African oil economy by focusing on economist Jeffrey Sachs's advisory project in São Tomé and Príncipe. It pivots on the ‘resource curse’, an economic device that has recently gained purchase in global policy circles. This paper argues that economic devices are not simply imposed on pre-arranged worlds. Instead, they collide with and adjust to already existing politico-economic and socio-cultural conditions, resulting in complex articulations. Drawing on ethnographic material, I critique the ability of the resource curse to make sense fully of apprehensions of the past, present and future consequences of extractive industry developments. Contrasting economic accounts of an incipient curse with competing and complementary local accounts of the effects of oil wealth, I propose a new model for the sociological analysis of the variety of articulations into which an economic device, such as the curse, may enter.     

China's dualist model on technological catching up: a comparative perspective

Abstract

The central question of this paper is whether China can go beyond simple technological transfer and toward innovation in this age of globalization. By adopting an institutionalist perspective, this paper argues that China has developed a dualist model during its economic transitional period in which the foreign sector has been isolated from domestic firms, while the domestic industrial sectors have also failed to develop organic linkages among themselves to facilitate technological learning and generate innovation. This paper discusses four major institutional arrangements that deeply influence China's technological development – the institutional logic of economic reform, the state's industrial policy, the financial system and the industrial structure. It suggests that, owing to these institutional elements, China has neither developed economies of scale, as compared with the South Korean case, nor has it built up a network-type of economy similar to its Taiwanese counterpart in order to generate the mechanisms needed for technological innovation.