Poverty,resource distribution and security: The impact of new agricultural technology in rural Bangladesh

Recent studies have examined the relationship between agrarian change and rural poverty in LDCs concentrating on either exchange or non‐exchange income. Neither approach employed independently is, however, adequate. Bangladeshi evidence is presented of growing concentration of control of land, of components of new agricultural technology and of ancillary resources. Increasing incidence of landlessness and near landlessness has resulted in greater dependence on wage employment for subsistence by the rural poor. It is argued that the non‐exchange component of income is important in slack periods and assumes even greater significance in abnormal years when both real wage and employment fall sharply. With rapid population growth, depletion of natural resources and greater penetration of technological and market forces, the cushioning effect of access to natural resources, in adverse circumstances, on the rural poor has become more limited and their income security has been undermined.     

Gender,Land and Sexuality: Exploring Connections

This article explores links between the issues of sexuality and gendered control over agricultural land. It discusses gendered land rights in several settings, concentrating particularly on agrarian and land reforms. I argue that land redistribution in the “household” model, discussed for Chile and Nicaragua, tends to entrench male household and agricultural control. In contrast, more collective forms, discussed for Vietnam, have displayed economic weaknesses but had potential to undercut such control by socialising women’s labour. Fears about and visions of female sexuality have much to do with backlashes against inclusion of women, either through allowing them membership of cooperatives and collectives or through granting rights such as joint titling to land. In sub-Saharan Africa, there currently exists much discussion of improving women’s control over agriculture and its products. These continue to meet opposition, despite female predominance in agriculture in the region. Thus, even though women work on the land in many societies, this does not give them any automatic “closeness” to nature or say within households. Control over women’s, especially wives’, labour within peasant households, is linked to the manner that their persons and their labour are bound up in this socio-economic form. The article also examines two feminist attempts to configure alternative agricultural forms: the case of a lesbian agricultural collective in the west of the USA and an Indian model of new female-centred households for single women. Heterosexuality as an institution and gender subordination more broadly, as the examples here indicate, have to do not only with sexual practices or identity but extend also to issues of labour and access to crucial resources.     

Policy analysis applications of remi economic forecasting and simulation models

This article surveys the ways that regional economic forecasting and policy analysis models have been used to provide information as an input for policy decision making in the public and private sectors. The major areas are as follows: forecasting and planning; economic development; transportation; energy and natural resources; taxation, budget, and welfare; United States policies; and environmental policies. The survey indicates that, while analysis and research may be required to prepare for a model simulation, the predicted economic effects of a policy can be very important information as an input for a wide range of policy decisions.     

Land consolidation as a factor for rural development in Moldova

This article draws on data from several recent surveys in Moldova to examine the question of land consolidation within the process of agrarian reform. It suggests that larger individually owned farms produce higher family incomes than smaller ones and thus farm augmentation makes a positive contribution to the well being of the rural population. Also, for farms of a given size, productivity increases as the number of parcels decreases. The article then proceeds to discuss the actual use of various market mechanisms for land consolidation, including leasing as well as buying and selling of land. According to various surveys, farms with leased land are in fact larger than farms that rely on owned land only. The article argues that land consolidation leads to better economic performance, while land leasing is actually used as a market mechanism for consolidation, which benefits both lessees, through increased farm incomes, and lessors, through income from lease payments for their land.     

Resource powers? Minerals,energy and the rise of the BRICS

The rise of new economic powers has seen increasing attention focused on the international role of the BRICS countries. Importantly, a common feature uniting the BRICS is that they are all resource-rich, and many analysts (and some BRICS governments) have argued that natural resources are one of the key factors propelling the rise of the group. This article explores the BRICS’ emerging status as ‘resource powers’, examining how resource wealth underpins their economic development and foreign policy strategies, and thus contributes to their growing influence in international affairs. It is argued that through the use of nationalistic mining and energy policies, the BRICS governments have exploited natural resources for both domestic economic and international diplomatic objectives. However, there are several challenges and emerging risks facing the BRICS’ resource strategies, which mean that resource wealth is making a positive – though inherently limited – contribution to the growing international status of the group.     

Country size and trade concentration

The paper attempts to provide some evidence on the nature of the relationship between country size and commodity and geographic concentration in trade, and on the effects of economic development and dependence on trade on this relationship. It suggests that the inverse relationship between country size and trade concentration is not as strong as a priori reasoning suggests; that there is no association between export concentration and economic development, nor between export concentration and dependence on trade; and that neither the dependence on trade of small countries should lead to extra export concentration, nor their export concentration should mean an impediment to economic development.     

State formation,development, and the politics of self-help in Kenya

Issues of rural development, state formation, and political effectiveness are of paramount importance in Africa today. Analysis of Kenya's Harambee self-help approach to development contributes to our understanding of these issues by clarifying not only the ways in which political and economic concerns are linked in one African nation in a hierarchy based on a patrimonial model of political behavior but also some facets of elite behavior and peasant-state relationships. This paper argues that self-help is central to Kenyan politics and hence to the operation of this model of political behavior, serving the interests and needs of both Kenyan elites and rural communities. Through their self-help projects rural Kenyans neither reject the state retreating into the economy of affection nor permit elites exclusive access to the benefits of both public and private resources. Rather, using elite networks to gain support for self-help projects, residents of rural communities improve their access to highly valued collective goods. These processes are currently being modified in some important ways by the Moi government.     

Governance and land use decision-making in Russian cities and regions

Using results of an elite survey from the late 1990s, this study examines various arguments to explain the roots of the slow pace of land marketisation in Russia. These include three arguments that focus in turn on structural impediments, resource generation opportunities provided by land ownership, and domineering local governments. The study also analyses two other explanations of spatial differences: the impact of local economic and demographic structure and urban governance. Findings offer some support for each of the dominant approaches but little evidence to support the importance of local economic structure. However, an analysis of governance and social practices are found to be useful in highlighting the relationship between beliefs, practices, and land allocation.     

Translating Legal Rights into Tenure Security: Lessons from the New Commercial Pressures on Land in Ghana

Abstract

Since the confluence of the food and oil price crises of the mid 2000s, Ghana has become a prime destination for large-scale farmland investments. While this trend could make valuable contributions to an ailing agricultural sector, the alienation of rural land for commercial ends could conversely have far-reaching implications for customary land rights. Through an analysis of the legislation protecting customary land rights and governing such the alienation of those rights and by contrasting this with practice, this article highlights some of the fundamental challenges in translating legal rights into tenure security in contemporary Ghana. It shows that despite the legal recognition of customary land rights, in practice customary land users are ultimately responsible for contesting infringements upon these rights. With traditional authorities able to capture substantial rents from the alienation process and government institutions offering scant oversight as a result of fragmented responsibilities, capacity constraints, and political disincentive, the protection of customary land rights is becoming increasingly contingent on community ‘capacity to claim’. Since poor access to information, unrealistic expectations and deference to traditional authority tends to quell disputes over alienation, the limited mechanisms for protecting citizen access to resources gives reason to reconsider the importance of direct state involvement in the customary land domain.     

SOCIAL CAPITAL,ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT,AND THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT: HOW INTERACTION BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AFFECTS THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT

This study investigates the relationship between social capital and governmental quality by considering the relationship between social capital and economic development in a cross‐section of countries. It is shown that countries with both high levels of social capital and economic development exhibit higher quality of government as measured by government effectiveness, rule of law, impartiality, professionalism, and a governmental quality index. It is also shown that countries with both high levels of social capital and low levels of economic development are associated with higher governmental quality as measured by professionalism. These findings question the use of heterogeneous indicators for governmental quality and show that the relationship between social capital and the quality of government depends on the level of economic development. Thus, the importance of the level of economic development in explaining the variation in the quality of government sheds light on the social capital theories of governmental qualities.     

The making of land ownership: land titling in rural Colombia – a reply to Hernando de Soto

Hernando de Soto’s best-selling book The Mystery of Capital argues that economically disadvantaged countries lack institutional arrangements that can spur economic development and capital growth. This article questions de Soto’s institutional economist account. It draws on a 14-month ethnographic study performed at two rural field sites in Colombia and in the central government office responsible for promoting land programmes designed to improve the living conditions of rural communities. This study, which focuses on the daily practices of public officials and rural campesinos, suggests the importance of the title document, and in particular the public deed, for land ownership. It describes the process by which landownership is created by the issuance of the land title document and highlights some important elements and untended consequences that are often neglected in this process of making land a legal and economic asset.     

Natural Resources,Development Strategies,and Lower Caste Empowerment in India’s Mineral Belt: Bihar and Odisha During the 1990s

Despite having equally vast endowments of natural resources and similar socioeconomic profiles, the Indian states of Bihar and Odisha pursued markedly different development strategies during India’s first decade of economic liberalization. Whereas Bihar turned away from its natural resource sector and adopted policies of social empowerment, Odisha courted private investment in extractive industries and aggressively pursued market reforms. To account for this divergence, we argue that the social composition of political power in each state directly shaped the strategies that leaders embraced towards the natural resource sector and overall development. This paper makes contributions to the writings on natural resources and the political economy of India. We show that the presence of abundant natural resources does not necessarily result in a predictable pathway of sectoral and economic policy outcomes. Instead, social factors can be a powerful determinant of how resource-rich states approach their economies.     

Local Fiscal Stress in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Kenyan Example

Abstract

This article identifies the fiscal weaknesses of local government in Africa, with concentration of the fiscal stress that is endemic to their condition. It then examines Kenya, as a case study in sub‐Saharan Africa. It continues to focus down on three Kenyan cities—Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu, and identifies their six major revenue sources: land based revenues, regulatory revenues, income‐based taxes, service revenues, user charges, and government grants. Although some of the data is problematic, it is possible to determine several reasons for local fiscal stress. These reasons include limited access to stable financial resources, unstable national economic performance, centralized governmental control, mixed results of decentralization, and institutional and managerial weaknesses, including corruption in the collection and use of resources. Four recommendations are advanced to help these local governments: the development of local credit systems, the use of non‐governmental organizations, the clarification of the use of foreign aid, and the development of a greater capacity for governance. This articles main theoretical contribution is the development of an analytic framework for examining the reasons for fiscal stress in sub‐Saharan Africa. By examining revenue and expenditure patterns of the three localities, the article develops a data set that highlights some of the reasons for local government financial problems—the governments do not know how much revenue can be collected from a particular revenue source, they do not have records of existing sources of revenue, and they only collect about 40–60% of their estimated collections.     

The response of peasant farmers to price incentives: The use and misuse of profit functions

The article is set in the context of evaluating the debate between the free‐marketeers [Schultz et al] and the institutionalists [Myrdal et al]. It surveys the literature on the application of profit functions to agricultural production in LDCs. In particular it provides a critical review of the literature which focuses on the inadequacy of economic theory, the problems of econometric specification, data limitations, and the contradictory nature of the econometric results. Overall, it is argued that the profit function is inappropriate on theoretical grounds and that most of the economic applications do not support the model. The article concludes with suggestions for future work which should take account of the role of class, power, and interlinkages in an historical context. Social and institutional factors, it is argued, are important in determining the behaviour of peasant farmers.     

Rice Land Designation Policy in Vietnam and the Implications of Policy Reform for Food Security and Economic Welfare

With the aim of promoting national food security, the Vietnamese government enforces the designation of around 35 per cent of agricultural land strictly for paddy rice cultivation. We investigate the economic effects of adjusting this policy, using an economy-wide model of Vietnam with detailed modelling of region-specific land use, agricultural activity, poverty and food security measures. Our results show that the removal of the rice land designation policy increases real private consumption by an average of 0.35 per cent per annum over 2011–2030, while also reducing poverty, improving food security and contributing to more nutritionally balanced diets among Vietnamese households.     

Village politics: Heterogeneity,leadership and collective action

When comparing stratified Fulani village societies, little direct relationship between the degree of heterogeneity and the success in collective action was found, except when heterogeneity among leadership and elite groups was compared. Small size and homogeneous groups do not seem to be general preconditions for stronger ability to perform collectively. First, it was found that homogeneity among elite groups enhanced capacity for collective action. Second, it was when heterogeneity in economic interests between elite groups intensified and coincided with other dimensions of heterogeneity that collective action became difficult to achieve, such as heterogeneity in economic wealth, access to land and common‐pool resources, and agreement over authority of the leadership. Third, collective action was enhanced by political elites and leaders being a bit better endowed and a bit wealthier than the average community members, but not when their assets were mobilised against the economic interests and sense of fairness of other social groups. Fourth, the coordination power of the leadership related to the management of common‐pool resources was undermined when leadership had extensive recourse to state officials external to the village community, underscoring the importance of autonomy.     

Cosmologies and Regionalisms from ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ in the post-cold war Americas: the Relevance of Karl Polanyi for the 21st century

Drawing on a Polanyian analysis of the land question, this article aims to analyse both Western and Indigenous cosmologies of Abya Yala—the name that indigenous peoples give to the American continent—to understand the relationship between human beings and land and nature. These cosmologies are at the heart of the way in which two distinct societies construct their regional space, one from ‘above’, the other from ‘below’, and they are therefore key to understanding today’s climate change problématique. Following this nexus it is argued that, since the end of the Cold War, a new regional ‘double-movement’, unleashed by the quest for land and natural resources has been in the making. This is a superstructural or legal battle between Western transnational regime-making and a law that originated at the ‘centre of the Earth’. The article explains both regionalisms and the dialectical interaction between them and demonstrates that Karl Polanyi’s legacy remains relevant for the 21st century.     

The right to food in the context of large-scale land investment in Ethiopia

Abstract

Since the global food crises of 2007, smallholder farmers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and other rural groups in many developing countries have seen their access to land, water and forest resources being threatened and reduced due to the acquisition of those resources by other actors – acquisitions that may have been promoted by state policies. Taking up the case of Ethiopia, this article aims to explore the implications of large-scale agricultural investments for local food security and the right to food. The article argues that in the context of the recent and ongoing large-scale agricultural investments driven primarily by the state, the interpretation and realisation of the right to food becomes a politically contested issue and that such investments run counter to implementing the state’s obligation to protect local people’s access to and procurement of adequate food. It argues that the large-scale agricultural investments both condition and pervert the realisation of food security.     

Issues in population pressure,land resettlement,and development: The case of Nepal

This analysis considers the question of whether resettlement schemes really relieve population pressure or help achieve a better regional balance between population and resource distribution in a manner consistent with Nepal's national objective of agricultural growth with social justice. The 1st part of the analysis discusses population pressure, followed by the conceptualization of ecodemographic relations and sociodemographic relations. The 2nd part of the analysis considers Nepal's agrarian economy along with a case-study examination of its contemporary resettlement project in Chitwan district. Finally, information is presented from a field survey conducted in Chitwan in 1979, which support the assertions that: the sociodemographic relations -- not population pressure as such -- are the primary roots of agrarian development problems in a country like Nepal; and resettlement schemes, when implemented without due consideration of the pervasive sociodemographic relations, are a deficient technical fix to imbalances in ecodemographic relations. Nepal provides a typical example of ecodemographic imbalances in the regional distribution of population and resources. Although the Hill and Mountain regions make up almost 60% of Nepal's total population, they share less than 30% of the total land under cultivation. The Tarai region, which is the northern extension of the Gangetic Plain in India, occupies over 70% of the cultivated land and supports only slightly over 40% of the population. As the case study illustrates, development strategies such as land resettlement are invariably formulated and implemented as a technical solution within the framework of ecodemographic relations. Little attention is directed to addressing the social dimension of these programs, i.e., the structual problems directly associated with the existing sociodemographic relations. Development, or land resettlement in the present case, is not simply a technical issue concerned with land reclamation and its management. It is also a social issue, because the sociodemographic relations determine significantly the direction (or directions) that resettlement programs take. When development policies make little effort to tackle the underlying forces of these relations, resettlement schemes result in the reconstitution of class divisions and disparity in the ownership of resources in newly resettled areas.     

Country size and economic growth and development

This paper attempts to provide limited empirical evidence on the nature of the relationship between country size and rates of economic growth and levels of economic development, and on the possible effects of trade concentration and dependence on trade on this relationship. It suggests that there is no discernible association between country size and economic development, nor between country size and economic growth, and that neither the dependence on trade of small countries nor their commodity and geographic export concentration are necessarily important factors in economic growth and economic development.