The ‘true protection’ concept ‐ a comment on Greenaway and Milner

Empirical studies estimating shift‐parameters to evaluate the ‘true protection’ especially for developing countries often reach the result that those parameters have very high values. This study is to show that it is not substitutional relationships but much more the very inflationary monetary policy of many developing countries which forces the shift‐parameters towards one. Moreover it is shown that it makes little sense to distinguish between ‘traditional’ and ‘non‐traditional’ exports and that shift‐parameters are not necessarily stable over time.     

A test of the ‘uneconomic culture’ thesis: An economic rationale for the ‘sacred cow’

This paper examines the validity of the ‘uneconomic culture’ thesis. A common assertion is that livestock have limited commercial value to the African, being accumulated mainly for social reasons. Two hypotheses are tested: (1) livestock accumulation can be profitable to the individual even if society incurs losses by such behaviour and (2) livestock purchases are the African's best investment opportunity. Support of the first hypothesis is found by indicating that the property system leads to divergences between private and social benefits. Support of the second hypothesis is indicated by calculating the present value of cattle in farming.     

Comparing ‘old’ and ‘new’ on Lenin: A review article

Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin. New York, Evanston, & London: Harper & Row, 1964, 707 pp.

Robert Service, Lenin, A Political Life. Volume 1, The Strength of Contradiction; Volume 2, Worlds in Collision; Volume 3, The Iron Ring. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1985, 1991, 1995, 246 pp., xviii + 422 pp., xxi + 393 pp., $24.93, $39.95, $29.95.

Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin. A New Biography. Translated & edited by Harold Shukman, New York: The Free Press, 1994, $30.00.     

The Place of Vietnamese Marriage Migrants in Singapore: social reproduction,social ‘problems’ and social protection

While the literature on ‘global care chains’ has focused on the international transfer of paid reproductive labour in the form of domestic service and care work, a parallel trend takes the form of women marriage migrants, who perform unpaid labour to maintain households and reproduce the next generation. Drawing on our work with commercially matched Vietnamese marriage migrants in Singapore, we analyse the existing immigration–citizenship regime to examine how these marriage migrants are positioned within the family and nation-state as dependants of Singaporean men with no rights to work, residency or citizenship of their own. Incipient discussions on marriage migrants in civil society discourse have tended to follow a ‘social problems’ template, requiring legislative support and service provisioning to assist vulnerable women. We argue for the need to adopt an expansive approach to social protection issues, depending not on any one single source—the state, civil society and the family—but on government action to ensure that these complement one another and strengthen safety nets for the marriage migrant.     

From ‘Unilateral’ to ‘Dialogical’: Determinants of EU–Azerbaijan Negotiations

Abstract

The European Union (EU) and Azerbaijan have negotiated three different agreements for a new legal basis underpinning their relationship since 2010. Whereas the EU tries to adhere to a more unilateral approach, Azerbaijan wants cooperation to take place on a more inclusive, dialogical, basis. The essay will present a model of ‘bargaining power’ to analyse how the Azerbaijani government has tried to enforce this, and to what degree it has been successful. It finds that the bargaining power model can explain some of the changing power dynamics in EU–Azerbaijan relations, and that these might speak to the broader Eurasian region too.     

Heterogeneous Effects of Urban Land Titling: A Replication of ‘Property Rights for the Poor’

We replicate the analysis of Sebastian Galiani and Ernesto Shargrodsky’s (GS) influential 2010 article ‘Property rights for the poor: effects of land titling’. GS use a natural experiment in a poor urban area of Buenos Aires to find that land titling increases housing investment, reduces household size, and increases child education, but does not do so through increased use of credit. The original questionnaires and raw data are not available and the existing variables provided by GS allow only a limited replication analysis. Despite these limitations, we successfully reproduce the original findings published by GS, and find these results are robust to alternative specifications. We also find heterogeneous effects regarding gender and education level of the original squatter.     

Resisting ‘Global Justice’: disrupting the colonial ‘emancipatory’ logic of the West

This paper takes issue with global justice theory, seeing it as a ‘global–local’ in which the perspectives and demands of post-Kantian Western liberalism silence ways of being in the world that move beyond a narrowly circumscribed definition of ‘reasonableness’. Taking its cue from critics of dominant liberal conceptions of the self, such as Spivak, Deleuze and Freire, the paper examines the impact of epistemological diversity and the radical ‘otherness’ of indigenous, peasant and marginal epistemologies on how Western intellectuals might think about global justice. We look at a number of examples of indigenous and marginal resistance to injustice in the global system, including the West Papuan and Zapatista movements, and conclude that the goals of such movements cannot be encapsulated in distributive or juridical terms. An alternative theorisation of global justice might, contra global justice theory, insist on a dialogical, contingent basis for discussing justice, whether local or global.     

The rise of the ‘China Model’ and ‘Beijing Consensus’: evidence of authoritarian diffusion?

The rise of authoritarian great powers has raised questions about the dominance of the liberal democratic model and has led to a perception that the relative balance between democracy and authoritarianism is shifting. Consequently, there is increasing interest in and concerns about the diffusion of alternative ‘models’ of political and economic development. Given that China's impressive economic development has led to growing military strength and geopolitical prestige, evaluating perceptions of the legitimacy, effectiveness, and applicability of that country's model of ‘illiberal capitalism’ is a good place to start. This paper evaluates whether the ‘China Model’ or ‘Beijing Consensus' is gaining traction internationally through a content analysis of eight years of US and non-US media sources. It finds that concerns about the beginnings of an anti-democratic ‘reverse wave’ are exaggerated and that at the present time there does not appear to be a decisive shift in favour of a model of authoritarian-capitalism.     

On Chinese agriculture: A quantitative look—A reply

This paper reports data on terms and conditions of share‐cropping contracts collected in 1975–6 from 334 randomly chosen villages in four states in India. Among other things, it suggests some evidence of higher crop share for the tenant positively associated with higher‐yielding varieties of grains and negatively with cost‐sharing by the landlord. Unpaid and obligatory service by the tenant for the landlord is quite uncommon; even less common is the phenomenon of a tenant being tied to a particular landlord. The landlord quite often gives production loans to the tenant, shares in costs of seeds, fertilizers, etc., participates in decision‐making about the use of these inputs and in general takes a lot of interest in productive investments on the tenant farm, quite contrary to the traditional image of rentier or usurious landlords associated with “semi‐feudalism”     

‘East’ and ‘West’ in contemporary Turkey: threads of a new universalism

The tired old civilisational categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’, loosely identified with ‘Islam’ and ‘modernity’, are alive and well, nowhere more so than in contemporary Turkey. The Justice Development Party (AKP) currently in government employs them assiduously to political advantage but they have a long history, having defined the parameters of societal identity and political discourse throughout the history of the Turkish Republic. The paper takes the strength of the categories as its starting point but moves beyond them by asking if discourses, narratives and identities, individual and collective, exist in Turkey which question, overcome and ultimately undermine the categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’. The paper starts by investigating the evolution of ideas about East and West since the late Ottoman period and accepts that they are still dominant. However, since the 1980s in particular, they are being undermined in a de facto way by cultural developments in literature and music, new trends in historiography and novel ways of relating to the past. In some ways in contemporary Turkey, the paper concludes, culture trumps the inherently essentialist idea of ‘civilisation’ and Turkish society is ahead of its political and intellectual elites.     

From ‘communism’ to ‘democracy’ in Cambodia: a decade of transition and beyond

This paper examines 10 years of political transition in Cambodia. It is particularly relevant because Cambodia has just passed through a third stage of transition in the form of national grass roots elections to dilute elite power. The scope of the paper covers the three elections in the period 1991–2002 and is located in Dankwart Rustow’s transition theory. I conclude that while basic elements of the theory hold true, qualifications are required in relation to the length of the ‘acceptance’ phase for the elites, and the extent to which, even after 10 years, habitually normalised democratic processes are still unreliable at best, and violent at worst.     

‘Big D’ and ‘little d’: two types of twenty-first century development?

Confusion between the idea of development as purposeful intervention and development as outcome has been addressed by efforts to distinguish ‘intentional’ from ‘immanent’ development, and the distinction between ‘big D’ development as Western post- World War Two modernisation in the Global South, and ‘little d’ as the creation of winners and losers within unfolding capitalist change. As a heuristic device this distinction has been put to a variety of uses within development studies, but it has rarely been subjected to further scrutiny. This paper asks (1) whether the distinction remains coherent or risks being stretched too far, and (2) whether it remains relevant within the changing landscape of twenty-first century development. It first traces the historical evolution of the distinction, and then presents an exploratory case study of Bangladesh’s garment sector in order to analyse the relationship between the two kinds of development empirically, identifying a number of contradictions and ambiguities. It finds that while the ‘D/d’ distinction remains useful at a general level, further conceptualisation is now needed, and its relevance may fade as the significance of Western aid declines.     

Japan's post‐war protection policy: Some implications for less developed countries

This article examines some of the implications of Japan's postwar development for contemporary developing countries. Whilst acknowledging the qualitative differences in economic structure between Japan in 1945 and today's developing countries it argues that many of Japan's decisions on economic strategy throw light on current debates regarding the merits of free trade or protectionism as strategies for developing countries. It stresses however the key role played in Japan by the highly competitive nature of the internal market and stresses the need to consider policies to stimulate a more competitive internal structure within developing country markets.     

Alter-Native ‘Development’: indigenous forms of social ecology

Abstract

The goal of this article is to outline an indigenous form of social ecology offered as an alternative development model. Based on the normative system of the Orang Asli (Malaysian Aborigines), this model is characterised by various social, cultural and ecological ideas and practices undergirding the interconnected conditions of equality, sustainability and peace, which engenders a better life for all within the community. I contend that this model will provide lessons on how we might develop a normative paradigm to serve as an alternative to the current ecological and socially unsustainable mainstream and neoliberal development policy and practice, obsessed with the attainment of economic growth and greater market integration.     

From ‘remittance’ to ‘tax’: the shifting meanings and strategies of capture of the Eritrean transnational party-state

Abstract

For decades, mass out migration has remained a defining characteristic of Eritrea. The country's first major refugee crisis occurred in the early 1980s, in the midst of its liberation movement. Upon gaining resettlement in the industrialized world, Eritreans overwhelming continued their support of the liberation war, both financially and politically. Since independence, the ruling government adopted strong measures to ensure the diaspora's continued political and economic engagement. We examine the Eritrean party-state's changing relationship with members of its dispersed population focusing on the evolution of an expatriate tax (2 percent Income Tax on Eritreans Working Abroad) levied on all emigrant Eritreans. Building on work that argues for recognizing the social and political dimensions of money sent ‘home’, this paper makes two contributions. First, we use an historical perspective to show how contextual changes can significantly shift the meanings of remittances, in this case from a voluntary patriotic remittance sent to the liberating government, to a coerced tax. Second, we bring the remittance-tax into the literature on remittances and development, expanding the types of income transfers under consideration. Attention is drawn to the party-state's articulation of the 2 percent Tax policy as a national development imperative and the various transnational governance mechanisms employed to coerce compliance. Citizenship serves as a lens for examining the state's instrumentalization and politicization of the diaspora's engagement with the Eritrean nation.