Collective Action for Smallholder Market Access: Evidence and Implications for Africa

It is widely acknowledged that the involvement of small farmers into markets can contribute to higher productivity and income growth, which in turn can enhance food security, poverty reduction efforts, and overall economic growth. In Africa, as in other parts of the developing world, agricultural production systems and their participants face significant challenges as a result of changing economic, environmental, and sociopolitical context. New dynamics in the global agricultural economy, such as the growth of supermarkets, are providing smallholders with both the new opportunities and new constraints to participate in and benefit from market exchanges. Collective action in the form of producer groups can enable African smallholders to take advantage of the new value chains and deal with existing market imperfections. However, certain conditions must be in place to create and sustain incentives for farmers to organize around marketing. Experiences from collective action in natural resource management (NRM) have shown that the types of markets and products, characteristics of user groups, institutional arrangements, and external environment need to be considered in order to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of collective marketing for smallholders. This paper applies the lessons from collective action in NRM to marketing, using existing case studies of producer groups in Africa, and offers policy recommendations on the factors that contribute to the success of collective marketing efforts.     

重大灾害中的集体行动及类型化分析

面对繁琐复杂的灾害表层现象时,如何进一步与主流社会学理论对话,这是未来灾害社会学研究重要的议题和努力方向.通过引入集体行动视角,将灾害中的集体行动具体化为“灾区内灾民集体行动”与“灾区外志愿者集体行动”两种类型.灾民的苦痛及重建的困境越大,对灾害的解读就越倾向“人祸”因素,并通过“搜索信息行动”、“定义情境行动”和“咎责行动”,引起大量的抗争性负向集体行动,甚至威胁到政府的政治安全目标以及社会的公正和稳定性.政府应通过灾害信息的及时颁布、专家诠释等策略影响灾害情境定调取向,将灾害导向“天灾”而非政府的疏失.灾后资源缺乏并非负向集体行动产生的主要原因,更重要的是弱势群体的受灾风险偏高.灾害治理的最高境界就是通过对媒体和民间力量的监督以及公平性机制的建构,将灾害情境中的集体行动整合成救灾和灾后复原的正向行动而规避其负面风险.     

The effects of global crisis on the Albanian economy

East European countries, including Albania aren＇t totally immune from the troubles of the international financial trade, although they will not have direct influence on their finances system. These effects of the global economy crisis have begun to be felt even in Albania. The poor classes will be much more and faster effected from this crisis. This article will treat the effects of the crisis into these classes, and the risks that this crisis brings to their finances. Important factors for this will be the decrease of the monetary incomes in the country, the emigrant remittance and foreign investments decrease and as a result they will influence in a decrease of the income for person in the country, which will have much influence at this level. The intention of the article is to treat the policies that should be taken by the government to protect them. The government of these countries should be concentrated in the social protection of the poor classes and in the ways of overcoming the crisis for them.     

The Fog of Humanitarianism: Collective Action Problems and Learning-Challenged Organizations

This essay explores humanitarian action, and by effect post-conflict state-building, in the so-called new wars of the post-cold war period – especially the targeting of civilians, the proliferation of non-state actors, and the perils of war economies. The host of reactions by aid agencies, termed ‘new humanitarianisms’, has called into question traditional operating principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence while the system has experienced dramatic increases in the number of organizations and available funds. Arguing that too little institutional learning has yet occurred, the authors call for changing the culture of aid agencies and investing in information gathering and sharing, policy analysis, and planning. In an era when reflection time is as valuable as reaction time, they stress the need to develop a humanitarian equivalent of military science.     

Benefits,Challenges, and Enabling Conditions of Collective Action to Promote Sustainable Production and Marketing of Products from Africa's Dry Forests

Collective action has been identified, by governments and nongovernmental organizations, as a mechanism to improve smallholder farmers' bargaining power and access to input and output markets. In many developing countries, supporting collective action has and continues to be an important policy instrument. However, in the collection and marketing of forest products, recognition of and support for producer organizations, is limited. Data, from focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and an analysis of formal producer organizations' functioning and organizational aspects, were used to examine the motives, benefits, challenges, and enabling conditions of collective action in promoting the sustainable production and marketing of shea, frankincense, and honey from dry forests in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Zambia, respectively. Lessons and key recommendations, including those related to policy, are presented on how collective action through formal producer organizations could be assisted to promote responsible forest products collection and marketing practices that benefit small‐scale producers in Africa's dry forests.     

Collective Action and Citizen Responses to Global Warming

This paper expands the relevance of the collective interest model of mass political action to explain collective-action behavior in the context of global warming and climate change. The analysis is an attempt to answer Ostrom’s call for a behavioral model of collective action that can be generalized beyond political protest to other collective-action problems. We elaborate, specify, and empirically test a collective interest model approach to citizen policy support, environmental political participation, and environmental behavior related to the issue of global warming. Key elements of the collective interest model—perceived risk, personal efficacy, and environmental values—are found to be directly, and positively, related to support of government policies and personal behaviors that affect global warming. We also discuss the links between the collective interest model and other important approaches to political behavior.

The Logic of Private and Collective Action

Since Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action (1965), it is impossible for political scientists to conceive of political participation without reference to his powerful argument linking numbers of participants, public goods, and participatory outcomes. What is puzzling is the poor empirical support for this argument in the domain where it should work best, namely explaining business political activity. Olson thought his arguments principally applicable to economic groups, and for the empirical development of his arguments Olson drew heavily on business interests, the most active segment of the interest group community. We explore these arguments with business political activities data by examining the statistical performance of various measures of market structure in determining business political activity, and find little empirical support. We do offer an alternative basis for business behavior lodged in both private and collective goods that preserves business rationality and also helps explain not only the amount of business political participation but the modes of business participation .     

Symbolic Legitimacy of Social Ordering and Conflict Settlement Practices: The Role of Collective Identities in Local Politics of Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

Collective identities like Islamic, kinship and geographical affiliations commit people to norms and practices of social ordering and influence their everyday practices. This article discusses how collective identities commit people in southern Tajikistan to patriarchal and authoritarian ordering and conflict settlement in view of unequal and contested distribution of power. A commitment to such illiberal norms and practices legitimises an exploitation of marginalised people. It discredits and prevents their discontent, court deals or open resistance. Furthermore, patriarchal and authoritarian conflict management ostracises rivals and/or suppresses those who criticise a hierarchical distribution of resources, co-optation deals, and patron-client exchanges.     

关于改革开放以来我国农民教育问题的若干思考

“三农”问题的核心是农民问题。我们要加强对农民的教育,努力提高农民的素质。改革开放以来中国农民教育呈现出一定的阶段性特点,也面临着许多挑战,在新的形势下我们应该强化农民教育的相关应对措施。     

中国共产党与当代农民土地情感迁变——以湖南省溆浦县桐木坨村农民为例

中国传统农民对土地有着深深眷恋之情。建国后,中国共产党从建设社会主义现代化强国出发,通过一系列农村政策改变农村的经济结构、社会组织结构和生产经营方式,导致农民的土地情感发生相应变化,从传统的眷恋逐步演变为集体化时期的“厌弃”,在承包责任制后又转变为“逃离”。农民土地情感的这种迁变是社会进步的表现,并为中国共产党制定正确的土地政策提供可资参考的依据。     

The Commons: A Social Form that Allows for Degrowth and Sustainability

This theoretical article opens with the reconstruction of a value-critical argument which claims that capitalism is a form of society that is structurally unsustainable. The reason for this is the need for ever-increasing value production which stems from the core of capitalism (the commodity form, competition, profit maximization, private production) and its internal and external limits. Based on this, the article calls for a fundamental social transformation and positions the commons as a social form that has the potential to replace the commodity form as societal foundation. Constituted by social practices (commoning) that are based on voluntariness, autonomy and needs-satisfaction, commons do not have an inbuilt growth compulsion. Therefore, the article concludes, the commons may enable humanity to deal with the question of sustainability on the basis of social structures that include the possibility of a solution.     

Collective action and social contagion: Community gardens as a case study

Institutions for collective action (ICAs), comprising individuals that informally organize to manage collective resources, have gained recognition as a significant means of informal governance of common resources alongside the more formal schemes of privatization and top-down regulation. Using the case study of community gardens, this article locates ICAs within the broader phenomenon of self-organization in complex systems, and inquires whether ICAs exhibit dynamics of social contagion and diffuse in accordance with patterns that prevail in self-organized complex systems. Applying quantitative methods derived from the field of complexity, we measure the temporal, spatial, and spatiotemporal diffusion of community gardens in the city of Jerusalem. The results suggest that the spread of community gardens in the urban space displays patterns of self-organization and social contagion. More generally, these findings suggest that ICAs may scale from the micro to the macro level in a bottom-up, self-expanding manner, while maintaining the advantages of local, commons-based arrangements. This perspective carries significant policy implications, and highlights the potential use of ICAs as a means for the governance of public resources, not only on a local, micro scale but also on a more global scale.     

Leaps of Faith in the Obesity Debate: a Cautionary Note for Policy Note for Policy-makers

The obesity epidemic has become an issue of major public concern in recent years, with dire predictions of its impact on public health budgets and the long-term health of populations in the developed world. Governments are being urged to act to improve our eating habits and make us more active. Policy proposals range from education campaigns to banning junk food advertising to more extreme measures such as 'fat taxes'. Although the debate has included discussion of public policy solutions to the problem, there has been little input from public policy specialists. This article explores some of the leaps of faith that are currently being made in the obesity debate and suggests that policy-makers need to be cautious about how they respond to calls for action. It is suggested that public policy research may provide some useful frameworks for considering the nature of the problem and assessing possible solutions.     

国有企业改制中的工人集体行动的解释框架--以西北某省X市H纺织公司的一场抗争为例

20世纪90年代后期以产权为导向的国有企业改制从根本上改变了中国工人的命运.集体无行动和集体行动理论为分析当代中国工人抗争提供了两种十分鲜明的视角.集体无行动理论认为传统意识形态的灌输、工人阶级分裂性特点和政府制度性补救等措施消解了工人的有组织行动.结合发生于西北某省的一个大型纺织公司工人的一次集体抗争来观察中国国企改革困境及中国工人的抗争策略.急剧恶化的生存现实、相对剥夺感的不断强化以及改制中的种种不公正导致工人的抗争运动越来越激烈,用集体无行动理论已经无法解释现实.我们认为尽管这些抗争在手段和策略上还很不成熟,尽管它离西方意义上的社会运动还有距离,但它已经具备了集体行动的特点,符合西方集体行动理论的解释框架.这些抗争行动要求我们必须更理性探索劳动关系新模式,在政府、资本和劳工三方之间达成新的共识.     

Institutional Collective Action on Drugs: Functional and Vertical Dilemmas of Unused Pharmaceuticals

The authors use the Institutional Collective Action Framework to analyze the barriers, opposition, and opportunities for residential pharmaceutical disposal programs in the United States via a case study on a series of take‐back programs pioneered in the state of Washington by local and state governments, as well as the corresponding backlash from federal agencies. While successful in some ways, these innovative solutions directly challenged the competing federal policy regimes controlled by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and, to a lesser extent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Findings from case studies suggest that functional dilemmas created by existing institutions with entrenched regulatory regimes are a key challenge to finding efficient solutions to vertical ICA dilemmas. Conclusions, then, connect to the broader ICA research agenda, and implications for multi‐level governance issues.     

集体行动困境的应对之道--以广州市老旧小区加装电梯工作为例

老旧小区加装电梯是一项面向特定空间、特定人群的准公共产品,居民协商是实现这一公共产品供给的集体行动,但居民的个体理性会导致实施时出现集体行动困境。广州是国内较早开展这项工作的城市,通过访谈和政策内容分析梳理广州市老旧小区加装电梯的工作历程,结合集体行动理论分析老旧小区加装电梯面临的协商规模和价值偏好的困境,并在此基础上进一步探讨居民协商集体行动困境的破解之策。广州市的经验不仅为其他城市老旧小区加装电梯提供了借鉴,也为今后通过制度设计促成居民集体行动、推进城镇老旧小区改造工作,形成社区治理的长效机制提供了有益的启示。     

上市公司股权结构、股东行为与治理绩效问题实证分析

本文利用上市公司年报数据分析描述了上市公司股权构成、股权集中度、股东行为的特征,并在此基础上验证了三者与公司绩效之间关系的研究假设。结果表明,国家股、法人股没有表现出其与公司绩效的显著相关关系;流通股对公司绩效也不存在显著的相关关系。股权集中程度越高公司绩效越差。股东参与公司治理的积极性与公司绩效之间存在正相关关系。     

The Role of Government in Collective Bargaining: Scandinavia and the Low Countries

This article compares the role of government in collective bargaining in five small West European countries. For the period until the second half of the 1970s, a distinction is made between countries in which government often interfered in wage bargaining, e. g. Denmark and The Netherlands, and countries in which government refrained from intervention, like Sweden. Belgium and, to a lesser degree, Norway. In all countries the tradition of (non)-intervention had already started before the Second World War. The article reviews some explanatory variables: in Scandinavia centralization of labour relations is crucial, in the Low Countries the nature of political verzuiling . Recent developments show that government intervention has become a characteristic of labour relations in all but one country.     

The Domestication of Violence: Forging a Collective Memory of the Holocaust in Britain, 1945-6

Stone engages with his subject on two levels, the theoretical and the empirical. On the theoretical side, he argues for the meaningfulness of the term 'collective memory' by showing how the response to the Holocaust in Britain served certain communal needs. 'Collective memory' here is the way in which a group produces narratives of the past which enable it to perpetuate itself, to take account of the past without disturbing its own self-definition. On the empirical level, Stone shows that this response was one which domesticated the horror of what had occurred in order to make its narration bearable. The process was by no means a deliberate whitewashing of the murders; it demonstrates how, in the construction of collective memory, the most painful episodes are unconsciously written out or integrated into more uplifting stories. For example, the murder of the Jews of Europe was frequently tied into a narrative of catastrophe and redemption in which the Zionist cause signalled the Jews' ultimate triumph over adversity. Looking at well-known texts and figures such as James Parkes, as well as lesser-known ones, Stone shows that 'collective memory' is a useful term for understanding the way in which texts and rituals combine to construct (whether consciously or otherwise) a certain understanding of the past. In the case of the British response to the Holocaust in the immediate post-war period, this meant a failure to recognize the full enormity of what had taken place, and the incorporation of the murders into culturally familiar narratives.