Property,power, and the presidency: ownership policy reform and Russian executive–legislative relations, 1990–1999

This article asks how new rules of political conduct are established in a country attempting political transformation and sweeping economic change. Based on a close analysis of the conflict over property policy and its effect on Russian executive–legislative relations in the 1990s, the study argues that regardless of formal distributions of power, the real allocation of policy-making authority is shaped in struggles over substantive policy issues. Those arenas, especially during the first years after the fall of an authoritarian regime, can function as “political classrooms” in which leaders either adopt or reject such practices as compromise and negotiation.     

Bandits and blanket thieves,communists and terrorists: the politics of naming Sandinistas in Nicaragua, 1927 – 36 and 1979 – 90

This article examines the politics of naming Sandinistas in Nicaragua during two periods of intense political and military struggle: the era of the Sandinista Revolution and Contra War (1979?–?90) and the era of the Sandino rebellion against the US Marines and Nicaraguan National Guard (1927?–?36). Focusing principally on the rhetorical and narrative strategies used by the USA and its Nicaraguan allies, the article explores the delegitimising master narratives concocted by these dominant groups and the efforts of two generations of Sandinistas and their allies to challenge these narratives. It argues that the politics of naming was embedded within a larger politics of storytelling, and that effective challenges to dominant groups' epithets must be grounded in historically informed challenges to the larger narratives from which they spring.     

Soviet legacies,organized crime,and economic gangsterism: Russia, 1995–2010

In countries like Russia, where legal institutions providing political accountability and protection of property rights are weak, some elite actors accept the use of violence as a tool in political and economic competition. The intensity of this violent exposure may vary depending on the position the province had had in the Soviet administrative hierarchy. The higher the province's position before 1991, the greater the intensity of business violence one is likely to observe there in post-communist times, because the Soviet collapse left a more gaping power vacuum and lack of working informal rules in regions with limited presence of traditional criminal organizations. Post-Soviet entrepreneurs also often find it worthwhile to run for office or financially back certain candidates in order to secure a privileged status and the ability to interpret the law in their favor. Businessmen-candidates themselves and their financial backers behind the scenes may become exposed to competitive pressures resulting in violence during election years, because their competitors may find it hard to secure their position in power through the existing legal or informal non-violent means. To test whether Soviet legacies and Provincial elections indeed cause spikes in commerce-motivated violence, this project relies on an original dataset of more than 6000 attacks involving business interests in 74 regions of Russia, in 1991–2010. The results show that only legislative elections cause increases in violence while there is no firm evidence that executive polls have a similar effect.     

Energy and Enterprise in Liu Hongsheng's Cement and Coal-Briquette Businesses, 1920–1937

The cement and coal-briquette manufacturing enterprises founded by Chinese capitalist Liu Hongsheng (1888–1956) during the 1920s and 1930s illustrate the potential of perspectives from the field of energy history to enrich our understanding of the interface between business and environment in modern China. Through his involvement in coal marketing and distribution during the early twentieth century, Liu Hongsheng promoted and profited from China's nascent transition to an energy regime powered by fossil fuels. With the establishment of his cement and coal-briquette companies, Liu also devised ways to profitably reuse and exploit by-products from his coal businesses as a source of energy for other forms of industrial production. More broadly, this analysis of the ecological linkages among Liu Hongsheng's business ventures situates them in relation to the interlocking systems of technology, infrastructure, energy sources, and institutions that facilitated the initial emergence of fossil-fueled economic growth in China during the interwar period.     

Perceptions,identities and interests in South–South cooperation: the cases of Chile,Venezuela and Brazil

The relevance acquired in recent years by South–South cooperation seems to be connected with deeper structural transformations occurring in the international system. However, the variety of cooperation models promoted by new providers in the South requires the identification of complementary factors to help explain current patterns. A set of socio-cognitive elements, related to each country’s perceptions, identities and interests, can yield greater understanding of the variety of South–South cooperation models. Such an approach is here applied to the cases of Chile, Venezuela and Brazil – three important providers from the South – in order to explore their different cooperation models.     

Economic Crisis,Income Gaps,Uncertainty, and Inter-regional Migration Responses: Kazakhstan 2000–2014

There is ample empirical evidence that internal migration occurs in response to wage differentials; recently, evidence has emerged that international migration is deterred by rising destination uncertainty. However, to our knowledge, there has been no analysis of how internal migration responds to differing incentives during good times and bad. This paper provides insight into this issue using detailed regional economic and migration data for Kazakhstan during boom (2000–2007) and crisis (2008–2014) periods. While conventional forces are affirmed, we find that the crisis deters migration and weakens the effect of wage differentials – while also reducing the deterrent effect of relative uncertainty.     

Export concentration and export performance in developing countries, 1954–67

The relationship between export concentration and various aspects of the export performance of 31 developing nations during the period 1954–67 is considered in this paper.¹ Estimates of the magnitude, instability and time‐trend of both the geographic concentration of exports and export earnings are utilised to estimate the direction and strength of association between these aspects of export concentration, instability and growth.² The analysis reveals diverse patterns of geographic export concentration among the countries, but offers little support for conventional views of an important direct relationship between export concentration and the instability or growth rate of export earnings.³     

Factor Proportions,Openness and Factor Prices in Kenya 1965–2000

This study analyses how changes in factor abundance and openness have affected relative factor prices in Kenya since 1965, using cointegration analysis and error correction models of relative factor prices. We find that factor proportions determined relative factor prices in the long run, while openness, measured by three different proxies, possibly had a short run effect on relative factor returns. The only deviation from this pattern occurred during the latter half of the 1990s when there was rapid wage growth, mainly due to labour market deregulation.     

István Széchenyi,the casino movement,and Hungarian nationalism, 1827–1848

The establishment of the Nemzeti Casino (National Casino) in Pest helped establish civil society in nineteenth-century Hungary. Count István Széchenyi, hoping to modernize Hungary on the English model, established the casino in 1827 as a public forum for the Hungarian nobility. By transcending caste divisions between nobles and bourgeois elites, Széchenyi's casino served as an unofficial parliament and stock exchange, and generally helped cultivate Hungarian patriotism. The Pest Casino inspired a nation-wide trend for casinos, which in turn formed a civil society in opposition to Habsburg absolutism. Yet when the casino movement spread to Hungary's minority nationalities, Jews, Slovaks, Romanians, and particularly Croats, the casino also contributed to national divisions in Hungary's ethnically diverse population that affected the course of the 1848 Revolution.