The Chinese peasant economy: Paradigm and myth

The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung. 1890–1914. By Ramon H. Myers. Harvard: Harvard University Press and London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. xix, 394. Index. £6.75.     

Aspects of Inclusion and Peoples’ Empowerment Related to National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, launched in the year 2006, is dubbed as one of the major flagship strategies of the Government of India, in coherence with the objective of removing poverty and unemployment. While scope of employment in rural asset creation protects environment, the earning opportunities address the issue of financial and social inclusion. Principal Component Analysis has been applied to calculate Financial, Social, Environmental, and finally Overall Inclusion Index as well as Empowerment Index. The results reveal significant association between Overall Inclusion and Empowerment index. Using multiple regression, Overall Inclusion is explained by certain significant variables.     

Electronic Resources and the Study of Political Elites in Russia

Developments in the information society in Russia have led to the creation of an abundance of online primary texts by political actors and institutions. This article surveys a large selection of official electronic texts with the aim of encouraging more extensive use of online sources and easing researchers' navigation of Russian politicians' use of the internet. While the authors do not claim that online data can replace the insights gained from elite interviews, the article suggests that online texts could be used more extensively as a valuable addition to existing methods applied to the study of Russian political elites.     

东盟跨境数据流动治理的机制构建

跨境数据流动是全球数字经济的重要基础,也是全球治理的新兴议题。在数字经济发展和东盟区域一体化的趋势下,东盟从统筹数字经济发展与数据保护入手,着眼于提升东盟国际竞争力和话语权,制定并完善跨境数据流动治理机制。这一机制的构建始于新加坡对数据保护规制的探索,基于东盟个人数据保护框架,在东盟数字一体化总体框架下制定数字管理框架,并以“东盟示范合同条款”和“东盟跨境数据流动认证”两大关键手段促进机制落实。该机制具有灵活性、包容性和指导性的特征,有利于促进东盟地区数字经济发展,降低谈判成本与合规成本,获得更多全球竞争优势。对于中国而言,在与东盟跨境数据流动治理机制合作对接方面具备可能性和可行性,需要充分认识和评估东盟机制对世界数字治理的影响、对地区数字经济秩序的挑战,推动中国与东盟之间的数字经济合作。     

The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence

Abstract

We replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts (M. M. Pitt & S. R. Khandker’s, ‘The impact of group-based credit on poor households in Bangladesh: Does the gender of participants matter?’, published in the Journal of Political Economy, 106, 1998). That study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty, a much hoped for possibility (though one not confirmed by recent randomised controlled trials). We show that the original results on poverty reduction disappear after dropping outliers, or when using a robust linear estimator. Using a new program for estimation of mixed process maximum likelihood models, we show how assumptions critical for the original analysis, such as error normality, are contradicted by the data. We conclude that questions about impact cannot be answered in these data.     

Local Navigations in a Global Industry: The Gendered Nature of Entrepreneurship in Ghana’s Oil and Gas Service Sector

Oil and gas discoveries spurred expectations of economic growth and employment in Ghana. The demand for labour is however limited within offshore petroleum extraction. Employment generation therefore depends on the development of an onshore oil and gas service sector. This study examines the strategies adopted by local entrepreneurs in the ‘oil city’ of Takoradi, focusing on the gendered nature of their activities, skills, networks and capital sources. I argue that the petroleum industry’s male dominance and international standards requirements, coupled with gender constraints regarding work and access to relevant resources, limit female entrepreneurs’ creation of employment in this emerging sector.     

The Chameleon Nature of Populist Parties. How Recurring Populism is Luring ‘the People’ of Serbia and Croatia

Abstract

In recent years the phenomenon of populism has inspired many debates and many doubts. Despite the growing scholarly interest, it still means different things to different researchers. In the first part of the article the author briefly presents the issues related to the phenomenon of populism itself and its relationship with democracy, and examines the creation of parties that researchers label populist. The second part is a case study that analyses the sources of populism, its manifestations and its importance in Serbia and Croatia over the last century.     

The rise of radical African studies

African Social Studies: A Radical Reader. Edited by Peter C. W. Gutkind and Peter Waterman. Heinemann Educational Books, 1977. Pp. ix + 481. Paper £2–90.

The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa. Edited by Peter C. W. Gutkind and lmmanuel Wallerstein. Sage Publications, 1976. Pp. 318.

Nigeria: Economy and Society. Edited by Gavin Williams. Rex Collings, 1976. Pp. 226. Hardcover £5.25.     

Book notices

Tamas Szemler (ed.), Relations Between Germany and East Central Europe Until 2000: Prospects and Policy Options. Trends in World Economy No. 75, Budapest, Institute for World Economics, 1994, 114 pp., no price.

Hüsnü Kizilyalli, Economics of Transition: A New Methodology for Transforming a Socialist Economy to Market‐Led Economy, A Review of Market Reforms of the Countries in Transition & Prospects, and a Critique of the Current Macroeconomic Theories. Istanbul: Bo?aziçi University Printhouse, 1994, xxvii + 741 pp.

Tito Favaretto, Il traffico oltremare di Austria, Ungheria e Cecoslovacchia e il transito attraverso i principali porti europei tra la fine degli anni ‘80 e l'inizio degli anni ‘90. Trieste: IDSEE, 1994, 280 pp. L.45 000.     

Institutions and growth in East Asia

Institutions have played a central role in political economy explanations of East Asia’s growth, from the developmental state to the micro-institutions of industrial policy. A review of these institutional explanations finds that few if any of the postulated institutional explanations involve either necessary or sufficient conditions for rapid growth. This finding suggests two conclusions. First, there are multiple institutional means for solving the various collective action, credibility, and informational problems that constitute barriers to growth. The search for a single institutional “taproot” of growth is likely to be a misguided exercise, and more attention should be given to understanding the varieties of capitalism in East Asia. Second, institutions are themselves endogenous to other political factors that appear more consequential for growth, including particularly the nature of the relationship between the state and the private sector. Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. He is the author ofPathways from the Periphery: The Political Economy of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries (1990) andThe Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000). He is the co-author (with Robert Kaufman) ofThe Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (1995) and (with David McKendrick and Richard Doner)From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry (2000). Also with Robert Kaufman, he is co-editor ofThe Politics of Economic Adjustment (1992). He is currently working with Robert Kaufman on a project on changing social contracts in East Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe. I am indebted to Tun-Jen Cheng, Rick Doner, Cheng-Tian Kuo, Greg Noble, and Andrew MacIntyre, not only for comments but for extended discussion of these issues over the years.     

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.     

Neoliberal governing through social enterprise: Exploring the neglected roles of deviance and ignorance in public value creation

This article makes a case for paying greater attention to how informal relationships between government officials and civil society practitioners impact processes of public value creation. Drawing on data from a five‐year qualitative longitudinal study, we illuminate how civil society practitioners deviate from the formal objectives of social enterprise policies in order to create what they see as having public value. Through a process of theory elaboration, we demonstrate how government officials’ wilful ignorance of, or informal collaboration in, such deviance, precipitates forms of public value that are consistent with wider political objectives. Our analysis adds nuance and granularity to the debate on public value by drawing attention to the arcane ways it may be informally negotiated and created outside of the public sphere. This opens up new empirical and theoretical opportunities for understanding how deviance and ignorance might be symbiotically related in processes of public value creation.”     

Pramit Chaudhuri: A personal account

As an economist who had absorbed the best of the Keynesian revolution, macro‐economic balances remained the grid on which Pramit Chaudhuri laid out his building. But his passion as a social scientist analysing an economy with perhaps the largest burden of poverty in the world came out in the fierce Brechtian quote which he used as an epigraph for his book, The Indian Economy ‐ ‘Those who have eaten their fill speak to the hungry of the wonderful times to come’.     

E-Government with Big Data Enabled through Smartphone for Public Services: Possibilities and Challenges

Big data shows great promise in public services to personalized e-government service delivery. Big data is a new generation of extracting value from a large volume of data sources with enabling high-velocity capture, analysis, and discovery for forecasting and better decision making. This article discusses the potential of big data application in e-government based on survey findings from smartphone habit as part of big data source. Data produced from smartphones usage is one of the main sources of big data. Online services can easily be accessed using smartphones, which support continuous engagement with citizens using e-government services. This study deployed quantitative survey findings from the smartphone habit of users in Brunei Darussalam. It presents an interpretative model that examines the important factors to consider big data in public services and discusses general challenges for integrating e-government services facing a big data era.     

Innovation Policy as Performativity—the Case of Sweden

This article analyzes how the idea of “innovationism” in Sweden has generated a new kind of idea-driven policy around the creation of innovative regional policy. In contrast to similar policies in this area, this policy does not manifest itself through traditional instruments, but evolves through symbolic and ritual performances, in particular through events and conferences. The article asks how this emerging idea has changed the existing institutional formation of sponsoring industrially relevant research. The vision of concerted action between decision-makers within modern innovationism reinforces territorial identity, but it also tends to devolve responsibility to the regional level since concerted action on the national level is hard to obtain. What emerges is a system of governing at a distance where different actors perform their roles according to often academic ideas of innovationism. The study is based on two qualitative studies in Sweden entailing both documentary sources and semi-structured interviews.     

Intensity of innovation in public sector organizations: The role of push and pull factors

The public sector is under pressure to provide new public services with increasingly scarce resources. In response, practitioners and academics have called for more innovation in the public sector. Our understanding of sources of innovation within public sector organizations, however, is inadequate. Motivated by this gap, we develop a conceptual model of how push and pull sources enable innovation within public sector organizations. Key to our theory is that push and pull sources of innovation are enabled by innovation capabilities. Five hypotheses are tested using cross-country survey data from European public sector organizations. Empirical analysis offers strong support for the central role played by innovation capability in enabling push and pull sources of innovation within public sector organizations. This article advances knowledge of the sources of innovation in the public sector and extends theorizing on push and pull mechanisms by examining their relevance to innovation in a public sector context.     

The Power of Symbols—Communism and Beyond

Examining the revolutionary origins of Soviet communism this paper argues that symbolic structures were crucial in the making of Soviet communism as a political force. It conceptualizes symbolizations as contingent interpretive acts that capture people in extraordinary situations of dissolutions of political order. In the first part, I identify the dramatic and imaginative sources of the Bolshevik Revolution, which created a schismogenetic system, in which symbolic structures of time, representation, and leadership would become disintegrative forces in Soviet society. In the second part, I elaborate on the creativity of political symbolism by understanding symbolizations as rites of passage, constructions of origins and ends, as well as reality-creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Rather than to know the origins of symbols, the proposition here is to understand how symbolic meanings contributed to the creation not only of the empirical-objective world of Soviet communism but also of dominant social science interpretations.     

Inside perceptions of public policy making in france: preliminary analysis

The study, based on interviews in Paris with government officials from the Office of the Pres-identify, Prime Minister's Cabinet, cabinets of five important ministries including that of the Economy, grands corps members, and Leaders of the trade unions, seeks to determine the reality of the process of goverrimentai policy making in the Fifth Republic and, most importantly, the influence of the major participants in policy formulation.

Cumulatively, the responses point out that the president and prime minister are viewed as the top arbiters of public policy, in the general and social and economic areas. They are followed, in decreasing order , by the Minister of the Economy, the ministers of important ministries, National Assembly, higher civil servants (especially members of the grands corps), Senate, and trade unions. Characteristically, all groups of participants interviewed have tended to rate their own part in the policy process more highly than the other groups had rated it.

In general, the preliminary analysis up-holds and corroborates the strength of the executive in the Fifth Republic.     

The enterprise and industrial composition of new British portfolio foreign investment, 1865–1914

Source Material on the South African Economy 1860–1970 by H. Hobart Houghton and J. Dagut. Vol. 1, 1972, pp. 369; Vol. II, 1972, pp. 247; Vol. III, 1973, pp. 263. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.