Stuck in Place: Investigating Social Mobility in 14 Bangalore Slums

This study of 14 Bangalore slum communities, including detailed interviews with 1,481 residents, represents an initial effort to study social mobility in India's largest cities, where opportunity and inequality have both been rising. The results show that slum dwellers have advanced economically, but the extent of improvement is small in the majority of cases, and there are many reversals of fortune. Sons tend to follow fathers or uncles into informal and mostly low-skilled occupations. The majority have lived in slums for many generations. These restricted-entry low-exit situations are brought about in large part on account of multiple institutional disconnections.     

Under construction and highly contested: Islam in the post-Soviet Caucasus

While scholarship on Islam in the Caucasus has focused on the late Soviet religious revival – the rise of Salafi jihadism and religious radicalisation in the northern part of these strategic crossroads – no study to date has addressed the discursive struggle over the social functions of regional Islam. This article deconstructs these discourses in order to examine the very varying, and often conflicting, representations of Islam advocated by various actors across the region and within particular republics. The article highlights the contested functions of regional Islam against the background of a religious revival that is still a work in progress.     

Regional Growth in China Under Economic Reforms

This article uses both cross-section and panel data approaches to study regional growth in China. Inter-regional income inequality increased ((divergence), the rich regions became richer but poor regions poorer (b divergence), over the data period 1978-95. This contradicts results from other cross-region country studies shown by Sala-i-Martin [1996] and some earlier studies on China. Only after controlling for regional effects, population growth, and investment in both physical and human capital do the data show significant b-convergence. More interestingly, the degree of openness and transportation are two other important factors responsible for differences in regional growth. This finding has important implications for regional development policy.     

Public Administrators Under Democratic Governance in Ghana

The politicization of the public service has been the subject of scholarly interest and debate. This article based on a desk study makes a contribution to this debate by examining the constitutional, legal, and political framework and environment within which public administrators operate in Ghana since the return to constitutional rule in 1993. It discusses the participation of public administrators in partisan politics and the challenges faced as well as benchmarking the Ghanaian experience against some countries. The article found that there has been growing politicization of the public service and an increase in the number of public administrators in partisan politics. The Ghanaian case reinforces the highly intense political environment within which public administrators operate and the myth of the politics-administration dichotomy.     

Top Civil Servants Under Contract

This article focuses on the introduction of the new top civil servant contract system in New Zealand and Norway. Even though both countries introduced contractual arrangements at the same time, the content of the reforms and their scope, scale and intensity are very different. The New Zealand reform was more radical and internally consistent. In contrast to an aggressive and thorough implementation in New Zealand, the contract system was implemented more cautiously and reluctantly in Norway. The effects of the reform are ambiguous and uncertain in both countries. A transformative perspective focusing on the interconnection between international administrative doctrines, national political-administrative culture, and polity feature is used to understand why contracts reforms have different contents, effects and implications.