Reassessing the Effect of Economic Growth on Well-being in Less-developed Countries, 1980–2003

Development debates have been greatly influenced by the growth consensus: the conventional wisdom that economic growth should be the primary priority for less-developed countries (LDCs) because it most effectively improves the well-being of the world’s poor. We compare the impact of growth to other independent variables in an unbalanced panel analysis of up to 109 LDCs and 580 observations across six time points (1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2003). Our dependent variables include caloric consumption, infant survival probability, one-to-five year survival probability, female life expectancy, and male life expectancy. First, we find that gross domestic product (GDP) has significant positive effects on caloric consumption, female life expectancy, and male life expectancy. Second, GDP does not have robust effects on infant and one-to-five survival probabilities. Third, fertility, urbanization, and secondary school enrollment have larger effects than GDP in the majority of models. The more powerful effects of fertility, urbanization, and secondary schooling cannot simply be attributed to an indirect effect of GDP. Fourth, we find that dependency variables do not have robust significant effects. Fifth, over time, GDP has become much less effective at improving caloric consumption and infant and one-to-five survival. We infer that there are serious limitations to concentrating exclusively on economic growth to improve well-being in LDCs.     

Managing the Environment: Rhetoric, Policy and Reality

This article argues that, despite environmental issues climbing higher on the political agenda and considerable recent policy activity, rhetoric is not matched by reality in our efforts to manage the Australian environment. We integrate the imperatives emerging from the policy and sustainability literatures and from actual policy, with detailed work on wildlife conservation in Victoria's Central Highlands. Our analysis demonstrates that, rather than undertaking the more intensive policy and 'adaptive management' that is needed, governments are often doing less and may actually be 'taking their hands of their wheel'. Some public policy and administration implications of the emerging policy field of sustainability are illustrated.     

Civil society and democracy in the third world: Ambiguities and historical possibilities

The terminology of “civil society” has gained currency in recent discussions of democratic movements around the globe. Although less grandiose in its implications than claims about the “end of history,” this terminology does suggest a certain universality in human experience. We argue that this claim of universality is warranted, but also problematic. We establish the relevance of our argument in reference to the literatures in African and Indian studies. We note first that the common employments of the concept ignore the theoretical and historical specificity of civil society: civil society is used to label any group or movement opposed to the state, regardless of its intent or character, or used so generically that it is indistinguishable from the term “society.” Instead, we argue that civil society is a sphere of social life, involving a stabilization of a system of rights, constituting human beings as individuals, both as citizens in relation to the state and as legal persons in the economy and the sphere of private association. Thus, we link the wide resonance of the concept to its embeddedness in the logic of liberal capitalist society and the capitalist global division of labor. This conception allows us to see that, although the emergence of a sphere of civil society involves at least minimal democranization and is supportive of struggles for further democratization, the status of democracy is also made quite problematic by the tensions endemic to liberal capitalism and the processes of uneven development within international capitalism. Our usage also allows us to distinguish more clearly movements dedicated to the construction of civil society from those that may count actually as counter-civil society movements. David L. Blaney received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is on leave from Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana as a visiting scholar for the 1993–94 academic year at The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052. His main research interests include international political economy, culture and international relations theory, and democratic theory. Mustapha Kamal Pasha received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C. 20016. His main research interests include international political economy, with particular regard to the Third World, and South Asian politics.