Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict: at a crossroad between peace and war

In the 1990s the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka had acquired the reputation of an orphaned and dirty war. Hence, there was widespread support when in the new millennium Norway tried to facilitate a dialogue between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the main Tamil insurgent group, and the Sri Lankan government. The peace process led to a ceasefire agreement and six rounds of face‐to‐face meetings. Although progress was understandably slow, a political framework that allowed Tamil national self‐determination while simultaneously protecting Sri Lankan sovereignty and territorial integrity seemed near. However, by late 2003–early 2004, such optimism lay shattered and a return to the days of warfare seemed a real possibility. In this paper, I offer an explanation for the onset of peace talks, assess its achievements and explore whether the peace process is still salvageable or a return to warfare is more likely to mark the future.     

The political economy of Indian planning

Peruvian statistics were examined to see if construction remained labour‐intensive during 1955–67. Data on output, employment, capital, and materials consumption were either lacking or had defects that made a direct comparison of trends impossible. But conclusions could be drawn from relative price and wage trends. If materials and capital had not been substituted for labour, average construction costs would have risen substantially more than they did. Our estimate was that by 1967 they would have been 25 per cent higher.

Evidence from a sample of firms, however, suggested that adoption of labour‐saving techniques cannot be tied simply to changes in wages compared with other costs. All eleven innovations studied, it is true, were markedly labour‐saving; but the rate of adoption did not closely follow wage changes. Adoption came most often during those less tense years when builders were neither overstrained with orders nor lacking credit and clients. One must conclude that both rising wages and innovations can limit employment expansion in relatively poor countries.

Since both agriculture and manufacturing have been unable to absorb the growing labour force of poor countries, economists have turned their attention to other sectors for supplementary employment expansion. One of these is construction. The construction sector creates not only jobs but builds capital goods with a desirable low import content. In association with carefully structured financial institutions, it may even generate savings. How much employment a given expansion of construction will provide depends on the production functions of the sector: their slopes and their potential shifts. One must find the changes in labour productivity that go with likely changes in volume, capital accumulation, trends in material supplies, and alternate technologies.

All these questions will get imprecise answers without good statistics on output, labour, capital, and materials, both unit prices and volume. If output varies in composition and in the relative quality of components, problems of weighting and aggregating arise. Because of the sector's ? instability and footloose nature, data on construction remain inferior compared with other sectors even in the most advanced and statistics‐rich countries. Can one make anything of the sorts of data available in poor countries where the sector must play its most crucial role?

In this article, using rather limited data, we note with considerable alarm that steady labour intensity and corresponding employment expansion cannot be taken for granted. Where daily wages are but a fraction of hourly American wages, and where interest rates are a multiple of American rates, the more lavish use of materials and machinery compared with labour can nevertheless begin early.

Peru is the country selected for our study. During 1955–67 Peru had a relatively high national output growth rate of 5.6 per cent together with a moderate rate of inflation of about 9 per cent. Except for the devaluation years of 1958 and 1967, flourishing exports of fishmeal, copper, cotton, and sugar helped carry this rate of growth. Lima was one of the continent's fastest‐growing cities in population and building, particularly in squatter barriadas. But in the 1960s commercial conduction also grew at more than a 15 per cent compound rate, measured in square metres built, according to some estimates.1 During 1964–68, construction had high priority under President Fernando Belaunde, a professional architect. More U.S. foreign aid for housing (direct and guaranteed private loans) went to Peru in absolute terms during this period than to any other country. We shall analyse the consequences by examining (1) trends in relative costs, (2) relative output and import trends, and (3) data about receptivity to innovations in a sample of firms.     

The study of international political economy in Russia

The author argues that international political economy (IPE), however prominent in the West, has not been established in Russia as an academic discipline. In the Russian policy community, the main debate is between liberal institutionalists, who advocate the country’s integration into the global economy, and the so-called dirigists, who promote relative economic autonomy. These two schools, however, only now begin to find their way in academia. Three main problems impede IPE development in Russia—the excessive separation of political science from economics, the deficit of theoretical generalization, and the weakness of educational curricula.     

The composite approach: Research design in the context of war and armed conflict

Researching in contexts affected by armed conflict presents many challenges beyond those normally encountered by social scientists. Focusing on these special difficulties has, in the past, often obstructed the task of understanding the methods that are applicable to situations of armed conflict. This paper aims to suggest a means of rectification. First, it introduces some of the particular issues that relate to field research under conditions of armed conflict and, second, it suggests a possible strategic approach to mitigating these. Overall, it is argued that a creative combination of different methods and techniques, broadly termed 'the composite approach', represents the most effective way of dealing with the challenges that working in a conflict-affected situation presents.     

Getting Armed Groups to the Table: peace processes,the political economy of conflict and the mediated state

Abstract

This article connects the literature on the political economy of conflict with the mediation of peace processes and elaborates the conceptual and practical value offered by this perspective. It shows that armed conflicts and groups have economic dimensions that should be recognised and managed in peace processes. An economic perspective helps to understand the multiple disputes within an armed conflict, the disposition of armed groups to engage, and the economic interests of the parties. Focusing on mediated states opens new avenues of engagement through perceiving alternative sub-state authorities and economic networks as an opportunity for dispute resolution. Overall the political economy of conflict and the mediated state offer new vantage points to shape the planning and management of peace processes.     

The post-cold war political topography of the Middle East: prospects for democracy

The debate on democracy in the Middle East has generated many important questions but has, so far, answered few of them satisfactorily. This paper endeavours to understand the prospects and problems for democracy in the region by making visible the connections between this issue and one of the least explored and understood aspects of the contemporary Middle East: how the suppression of communist, socialist, and other leftist and reformist political movements in the region after World War II affected and continues to affect the region's economic and political development. It details the campaign in the 1950s and 1960s to eradicate not only communists and socialists but any element in the region calling for democratic government or land reform. The result of this campaign was to suppress liberal, reformist and progressive elements in the region that, in Europe and elsewhere, supported and encouraged the democratisation of national politics.     

The Anti-Politics of Development: donor agencies and the political economy of governance

This article discusses the attempt undertaken by several development aid agencies since the turn of the century to integrate political economy assessments into their decision making on development assistance. The article discusses three such attempts: the Drivers of Change adopted by the UK's Department for International Development, the Strategic Governance and Corruption Analysis (sgaca) developed by the Dutch Directorate General for International Cooperation and the new thinking on political economy analysis, policy reform and political risk advanced by the World Bank. On the basis of a political-economic interpretation of development agencies, two main factors are found to hinder the successful application of political economy assessment. In the first place, the agencies' professional outlook leads them to see development in primarily technical terms. In the second place, the nature of incentives for development professionals leads them to resist the implementation of political economy analyses.     

Oil abundance and violent political conflict: A critical assessment

This paper addresses one of the empirical claims of the ‘resource curse’ argument, namely that oil abundance raises the probability of political violence. I argue that the two main theoretical premises of the oil-civil-war link, rent-seeking and the rentier state model, fail to provide a convincing argument as to why oil economies are more vulnerable to the onset of civil war. I find that three often-mentioned mechanisms as to why oil economies succumb to political violence not convincing; that oil economies are poor economic performers; that oil economies generate high corruption; and that oil economies tend to produce authoritarian regimes. I also examine the empirical evidence on the oil-civil-war link and conclude that the results are not robust. I conclude with some policy implications.     

The political economy of global firms from India and China

This article attempts to build a bridge between contemporary studies of global firms from emerging economies and existing theories in comparative political economy. It argues that given the primacy of the state as an economic actor in developing countries, the variety of capitalism literature could provide a theoretical foundation for firm-level analyses of emerging market multinationals. For example, the authors suggest that China and India may be moving towards a ‘hybrid market economy’. They also offer a typology of Indian and Chinese corporates to demonstrate an empirical approach to analysing domestic business–government relationships and the ways in which these firms are shaped by the peculiarities of their respective institutional setting. Finally, they identify some of the likely pitfalls of doing cross-national comparisons of emerging market multinationals, particularly with respect to the reliability of corporate data.