The Mexican political system: A case‐study in political development

I report a remarkable finding, that regulatory authorities, who have no a priori knowledge of Rabin’s 1993 fairness axioms (associated with a very specific utility function), have always proposed legal fares in the auto-rickshaw (three-wheeler) market in New Delhi that satisfy them. Regulated fares are ignored by auto–rickshaw drivers and customers. They bargain on prices among themselves. Newly announced fare hikes are effective enough to ensure the prevalence of legal uniform (non-negotiated) prices for a considerable amount of time. I suggest that the two of the most recent hikes have satisfied Rabin’s fairness axioms. The results, I report, are robust to different cooperative games of bargaining.     

Provocation at the center: A study in the history of counter‐terror

Abstract

This paper deals with the early beginnings and subsequent history of the secret, or political, police in nineteenth‐century Europe, whose task was to tame and terrify the masses, appeal to fear, and to root out revolutionary groups and secret societies, including even revolutionary attitudes. As pointed out here, the origins of such police forces, specializing in counter‐terror, go back to the French Revolution and the Ministry of Police headed by Fouche. Autocratic governments not being unusual, the history of counter‐terrorism displays many practitioners and techniques during the nineteenth century. A true heir of Fouche was Louis Andrieux, a Chief of Police of the Third Republic in France, who gave advice to Tsar Alexander III that has since been followed by many agents provocateurs and counter‐revolutionaries. The Russian Okhrana and the role played by Plehve in containing the revolutionary movement are discussed as are also the alliance between Degayev and Sudeykin, in addition to the Zubatov system and the Azef affair. Throughout, the struggle between revolution and counter‐revolution illustrates the fact that the physical blows that were the results of provocation were not always decisive; the exposure of provocation was often more harmful than anything that provocation itself could achieve. Moreover, the author concludes, the role played by the Russian secret police served to perpetuate terrorism and made all other state authorities a domain for the machinations and intrigues of the leaders of the secret police.     

Utilising 360‐degree feedback in the public sector: A case study of the Korean central government

The 360‐degree feedback involves all aspects of a group: managers, colleagues, subordinates, and customers. Recently, the Korean Civil Service Commission (CSC) supports the use of multiple raters as an effective method of assessing performance, both for developmental and appraisal needs. The 360‐degree feedback was officially adopted for employee promotion in the Korean central government in 1998. However, there are direct costs in designing 360‐degree feedback instruments and in training sessions for implementation, as well as human costs that include confusion and fear about 360‐degree feedback. Like many organisational change efforts, cultures and habits are slow to change. Autocratic managers can be reluctant to change the rules in any fashion that could pose a threat to their positions of power.     

The behaviour of indigenous and non‐indigenous farmers: A case study

This paper contrasts the economic performance of a group of immigrant Chinese paddy farmers in West Malaysia with their native Malay counterparts. The situation involves their differing response to the introduction of doublecropping. Productivity measures, production function estimates, and field observations indicate significant differences in performance. The reasons for these differences are attributed to the characteristics of immigrant groups, differences in perception of the innovations, and historical factors.     

Agrarian reform and the struggle for labour‐power: A Peruvian case study

This paper examines conflict over labour‐power, and argues for its centrality to an understanding of class struggle taking place in the Peruvian province of La Convención during the pre‐ and post‐reform era. Initially, this conflict involved landlord and tenants over the issue of labour‐rent. When additional land became available as a result of the expropriation of the landlord class, the implementation of the agrarian reform deprived the peasant enterprise of labour‐power necessary for its cultivation. The increasingly acute struggle between different peasant strata for access to and control over labour‐power in the post‐reform period accordingly involved the intensification of the debt bondage mechanism and avoidance of political office‐holding by better‐off peasants.     

The divergence of private from social costs in rural‐urban migration: A case study of Nairobi,Kenya

In LDCs the level of urban wages tends to induce more people to seek employment in the towns than can be employed at this wage level. The existence of these urban unemployed causes the private costs of migration to diverge from the social costs. The individual rural resident decides to remain or migrate on the basis of perceived private costs of migration. The effect of a decision to migrate on the economy is the social cost of migration. In our study we consider the determinants of different levels of private and social costs associated with different stocks of urban unemployed. In addition, utilising survey data on Nairobi, Kenya, an attempt is made to quantify the major private and social costs of migration to determine whether they diverge significantly. On the basis of these estimates some policy options for limiting urban unemployment caused by urban in‐migration are considered.     

Short‐run changes in rural income inequality: A decomposition analysis

This paper quantitatively assesses the principal determinants of the rather dramatic decline in income inequality observed in rural India between 1968–69 and 1970–71. A simple form of decomposition analysis is used to demonstrate that the most important effects of changes in weather, in technology, and in other factors on income distribution are those which occur rather indirectly as a result of overall tightening of the labour market. Whereas in periods of generally bad weather, workers from high‐income households apparently ‘crowd‐out’ those from low‐income households, in periods of good weather income effects induce the former to consume leisure, thereby opening up more jobs for workers from low‐income households.     

A farm‐sizewise analysis of irrigation distribution in India

This article analyses and describes the relationship between the size of operational holding on the one hand and various irrigation and irrigation‐related variables, on the hand, using cross‐section regression analysis of farm‐sizewise/statewise Indian data. The overall conclusion that emerges from the analysis is that irrigation development in India as a whole seems to be such that its propagation and diffusion among agricultural households seems to be somewhat in favour of larger farms. Even though the government predominantly controls the development and distribution of flow‐sources of irrigation, especially of canal irrigation, it does not seem to have produced any significant positive impact on reducing the level of inequity involved in the distribution of irrigation across farm‐size groups.