Social Desirability,Opportunism and Actual Support for Farmers’ Market Organisations in Ethiopia

One of the striking issues in the literature on farmers’ market organisations (FMOs) is that farmers generally report quite positive opinions regarding the services of their FMO, while, at the same time, actual sales reveal a much more reserved attitude. We argue that farmers may feel social and/or opportunistic pressure to express positive opinions concerning the FMO, to donors and policy-makers, which are not necessarily in line with their actions. This article proposes a list experiment method to control for this bias. The method shows that especially farmers who express strong support for the FMO seriously hesitate to speak freely.     

Social Networks and Factor Markets: Panel Data Evidence from Ethiopia

We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. We use detailed longitudinal household survey data and employ fixed effects estimation approaches to identify the effect of iddir membership on factor market transactions among farmers. We find that joining an iddir network improves households’ access to land, labour and credit transactions. Our findings also hint that iddir networks may crowd-out borrowing from local moneylenders (locally referred as ‘Arata Abedari’), a relatively expensive credit source. These results suggest that non-market institutions can play crucial roles in facilitating market transactions.     

War by other means: the ltte's strategy of institutionalising power sharing in the context of transition from war to peace—a response to Muttukrishna Sarvananthan

Abstract

This paper analyses the Indian government's policy response to the Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (trips) and examines the implications of this response for food security and farmers. trips has become one of the most controversial agreements of the wto. This is because of its wide and far-reaching mandate and its complex socioeconomic implications. It is argued that the changes made to the Indian Patents Act in response to trips will compromise the food sector and the rights of small farmers by conferring strong rights on upstream agents who produce proprietary agricultural inputs using biotechnology. Not only are these agents able to exert monopoly price control over agricultural inputs for 20 years, they also have the right to determine the conditions under which farmers and researchers use patented processes and products. The paper outlines policy options available to the Indian government to tighten the scope of patentability in the food sector.     

Business Process Re-Engineering and Balanced Scorecard in Swedish Public Sector Organizations: Solutions for Problems or Problems for Solutions?

This article analyzes and discusses the adoption and implementation of Business Process Re‐Engineering (BPR) at a hospital and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) at a local government. At the hospital, BPR was adopted as a solution to problems, but became de-coupled from operations, and later used for legitimacy reasons. At the local government, without having identified clear problems, BSC was adopted as an attractive solution but became coupled, rather than de-coupled, to operations. Our study shows that de-coupling does not follow the path proposed by neo-institutional theory, and that legitimacy from popular management concepts can be obtained both by coupling and by de-coupling the concepts from operations.     

A Storm on the Horizon? “Twister” and the Implications of the Blockchain and Peer-to-Peer Social Networks for Online Violent Extremism

Abstract

“Twister,” developed by Miguel Freitas, is a social network platform centered around micro-blogging, much like Twitter. However, rather than relying on centralized servers owned and maintained by a single firm, Twister users operate a blockchain combined with distributed hash table (DHT)–like and BitTorrent-like protocols to both make posts and send private messages, and also to receive entries from other users. Twister’s raison d’etre is that it offers a social networking platform that cannot be censored and cannot itself censor. The software does not record the Internet Protocol addresses users use to access the service, nor does it notify other users of an account’s online/offline status. Growing adoption of blockchain services means that it is possible that the concept of decentralized social networks could become a norm. It is suggested in this article that blockchain-based peer-to-peer social networks present challenges to the current counterextremist practices for content removal and censorship. While there are methods to disrupt usage of blockchain-based peer-to-peer services, these approaches may have the net harm of curtailing bona fide use of legal and novel technologies. Given this opportunity cost, non-transitory online violent extremist content may need to be tolerated.     

Network relationships and standard adoption: Diffusion effects in transnational regulatory networks

The soft law measures that transnational regulatory networks produce have become increasingly important in regulating cross-border market activity. However, domestic agencies vary considerably in terms of the rate by which these soft law measures are adopted, and the ways in which they spread across jurisdictions are not well understood. This article argues that existing theoretical explanations referring to socialization or power dynamics have a specific network-structural pattern associated with them, and that longitudinal network analysis can be used to test their hypothesized effects. In particular, we study the widespread adoption of the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU). Based on a longitudinal dataset (2002–15) of the inter-agency relationships between securities regulators (n = 109), we use Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOM) to predict the rate at which transnational standards are adopted by domestic agencies. The results indicate that standard adoption is contagious in the network of securities regulators.     

Stealing from the past: Globalisation,strategic formation and the use of indigenous intellectual property in the biotechnology industry

Biotechnology has proven itself to be one of the most promising and volatile sectors in the world economy. From genetic engineering to the mapping of human cell lines, biotechnology is now a multibillion dollar venture. As a result the trade in biological specimens has increased, with researchers continually seeking new sources for specimens. The goal of our research is to explore two fundamental questions related to the biotechnology industry: (1) what has been the driving force behind the relatively recent explosive growth in the biotechnology industry; (2) what has been the impact on the developing world - which houses the natural resources that are the bases for many of these new biotechnology discoveries? We argue that globalisation has pushed governments, biotechnology firms and universities into strategic alliances that have unfairly included another partner in the creation of these new products: the developing world.     

The Impact of Bt Cotton on Poor Households in Rural India

The impact of genetically modified (GM) crops on the poor in developing countries is still the subject of controversy. While previous studies have examined direct productivity effects of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton and other GM crops, little is known about wider socioeconomic outcomes. We use a microeconomic modelling approach and comprehensive survey data from India to analyse welfare and distribution effects in a typical village economy. Bt cotton adoption increases returns to labour, especially for hired female workers. Likewise, aggregate household incomes rise, including for poor and vulnerable farmers. Hence, Bt cotton contributes to poverty reduction and rural development.     

The Effects of Risk Preferences on the Adoption of Post-Harvest Technology: Evidence from Rural Cambodia

We investigate how rice farmers’ risk preferences affect the adoption of post-harvest technology in Cambodia, focusing on moisture meters. We find that risk-averse farmers are more likely to adopt moisture meters, although the degree of farmers’ loss aversion or the extent to which they tended to overweight small probabilities do not affect the adoption. In the setting of our study, the effects of farmers’ risk preferences on agricultural technology adoption can be described by using expected utility theory. However, controlling for loss aversion and probability weighting improves the precision of examining the effects of farmers’ risk preferences on adoption.     

Futures for farmers: Hedging participation and the Mexican corn scheme

Administered commodity price schemes in developing countries have proved ineffective in raising farmers' incomes, and price stabilisation through futures markets is increasingly advocated as the alternative policy objective. A potential difficulty is that farmers tend not to hedge extensively, even in developed countries where access to futures markets is long established. Explanations for this reluctance are examined here with context provided by the Mexican hedging programme, which incorporates financial incentives to spur adoption. Applying representative data for corn to a well-known analysis of the hedging decision suggests that limited participation may reflect rational calculation rather than farmer ‘inertia’. A policy implication is that permanent access subsidies are difficult to justify from the national perspective.     

The role of education in facilitating risk-taking and innovation in agriculture

The impact of education on farmers' attitudes toward endogenous risk (measured using an attitude survey instrument) is estimated with household data from rural Ethiopia. Education of the household head is found to decrease risk-aversion. Next, the effects of education and risk attitudes on technology adoption are estimated. Schooling encourages farmers to adopt innovations, whereas risk-aversion reduces the probability of adoption. Thus, we find that schooling encourages innovation, a potentially risky undertaking, not only directly but also indirectly, through its effect upon attitudes toward risk. To the extent that educated farmers are early innovators and are copied by those with less schooling (as other research on the same data has shown), the reduction of riskaversion not only has private benefits for those with education but also may have externality benefits.     

The securitisation of life: Eastern Kurdistan under the rule of a Perso-Shi'i state

Abstract

Since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has adopted a sophisticated set of policies to assimilate the Eastern Kurds. The Kurds are often the main target of the Iranian state’s military operations, its assimilatory strategies, and its regime of surveillance. After the ‘conquest’ (fath) of Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) in 1979, the state tried to retain control over the region through systemic militarisation, the establishment of ‘revolutionary institutions’, and new religious and cultural centres, to transform the demographic, religious and cultural profile of Kurdistan. This paper is an attempt to illuminate the state’s religious nationalism and various forms of assimilatory strategies that the Islamic Republic of Iran has employed to transform Kurdish regions.     

Notes Toward a Theory of Ideology in Historlcal Writing on Modern Afrlca

Since the publication of her first novel Le ventre de l’Atlantique (2003), Fatou Diome, a Senegalese author who immigrated to France in the 1990s, has been regularly invited to French cultural TV programmes, in which she often criticises European foreign policy, as well as social and racial segregation. Despite her public political commitment, in several interviews, Fatou Diome argues that literature should be dissociated from politics. This article analyses Diome’s narrative techniques when depicting current social issues in her second novel Kétala (2006). In Kétala, Diome shows how Senegalese gay people and women face social violence and exclusion. Drawing on queer theory and the concept of performance, this article describes the various strategies through which marginalised identities in Kétala contest heteronormative social representations. This paper argues that Fatou Diome’s novel captures the reality through a singular poetics.     

Domestic credit and the balance of payments in Ghana: A comment

This article provides evidence from a randomised control trial conducted among potato farmers in Ecuador about the impact of mobile phone text messages on farmer knowledge about and adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) practices. Using psychological constructs, we examine competing explanations for non-standard decision-making leading to low adoption of beneficial agricultural technologies. Farmers who received text messages have significantly higher knowledge and are more likely to adopt most IPM practices than those in the control group. Findings provide evidence that text messages lead to behavioural changes by reducing inattention and sub-optimal heuristics in the face of complex decisions.     

Reclaiming Scholarly Authority: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi's Critique of Jihadi Practices

This article deals with the attempts by the radical Islamist ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi to reclaim scholarly authority over jihad, a phenomenon he has helped promote but that has led to excesses he disagrees with and has increasingly become the prerogative of fighters instead of scholars. These attempts by al-Maqdisi to reassert his own jihadi authority are expressed through criticism of certain jihadi practices and advice to jihad fighters. Because al-Maqdisi has been in the forefront of radical scholars calling for jihad, his criticism has been dismissed by some jihadis as revisionism of his earlier views and as the words of a man lacking any fighting experience himself. This article argues that al-Maqdisi's criticism of certain jihadi practices does not constitute revisionism of his earlier views but is an effort to take greater scholarly control of the jihadi trend that he has partly inspired but which—in the hands of militants—has also developed beyond what he sees as useful and even Islamically legitimate.     

The economic impact of genetically modified cotton on South African smallholders: Yield,profit and health effects

Results of a large-scale survey of resource-poor smallholder cotton farmers in South Africa over three years conclusively show that adopters of Bt cotton have benefited in terms of higher yields, lower pesticide use, less labour for pesticide application and substantially higher gross margins per hectare. These benefits were clearly related to the technology, and not to preferential adoption by farmers who were already highly efficient. The smallest producers are shown to have benefited from adoption of the Bt variety as much as, if not more than, larger producers. Moreover, evidence from hospital records suggests a link between declining pesticide poisonings and adoption of the Bt variety.     

Al-Shabaab,Social Identity Group,Human (In)Security,and Counterterrorism

This article examines the link between human security, social identity, and al-Shabaab. The first section explores how social identity group theory can help explain al-Shabaab's recruitment. The second part focuses on the counterterrorism campaign against al-Shabaab, which involves decapitation, aggressive peacekeeping through a proxy in the shape of the African Union Mission in Somalia, and the role of a domestic de-radicalization program. The article concludes that al-Shabaab's allure is in decline and the group is facing internal turmoil, which makes its overtures toward the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant very dangerous, as al-Shabaab could act as an effective conduit between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.     

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN POLAND: EMPIRICAL INSIGHTS INTO THE PROCESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

The subject of this investigation is the performance of Polish local government and its ability to make and implement environmental policy. The article proposes an assessment of national policy implementation based on policy outputs in the form of local policy programmes. National policy is implemented inter alia through elaboration, adoption and execution of environmental protection programmes at three subnational levels of self‐government. Self‐government is solely responsible for preparation and execution of the programmes. For every municipality, the rules for adoption including timetable, the structure of the draft, consultation of the draft and formal vote by local council to adopt the draft are the same. Therefore, the process of elaboration and adoption provides opportunity to compare municipalities across the country. Survey and interview based data from the study gives evidence about municipal performance in the programming and allows verifying possible influence of three macro factors on this performance.     

Fostering the post-development debate: the Latin American concept of tecnologia social

This essay revisits the historical development of a concept – tecnologia social – as one avenue for discussing alternatives to post-development, arguing that the Western-based historical path of technology development is one of the main sources of growing human impoverishment, social inequalities and economic dependency. The concept of tecnologia social points towards political processes that create opportunities to redefine the arrangements among social groups, artefacts and methods used in everyday life, particularly for production and consumption. Because the post-development debate has been criticised for formulating a sound and strong critique to mainstream development but failing to propose concrete empirical alternatives, we seek to foster the debate through the Latin American concept of tecnologia social.