The politics of a windfall: allocating special offshore oil and gas receipts in four southern states facing fiscal retrenchment

Windfall receipts represent unusual opportunities either to help resolve current budget needs or to provide more long-term budget stability. This paper uses a set of state case studies to clarify the windfall phenomena. The windfall program under study is a special Federal-State offshore oil and gas revenue sharing program. At the time of the windfall receipt, each affected state faced significant current account retrenchment. Under both public choice and resource scarcity reasoning, windfall receipts are vulnerable to current account spending. The results indicate, however, that prior windfall experience or existing decision-rules governing windfall receipts provide an incentive to allocate a windfall differently than current revenues. In each case studied, part, or all, of the windfall was dedicated into an unexpendable trust fund. The implications for future study are discussed.     

The less developed countries and the global economy

The Transnational Corporation and Uneven Development: The Internationalisation of Capital and the Third World. By Rhys Jenkins. London: Methuen, 1987. Pp.229. £28 (hardback); £8.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 416 733409 and 73350 6.

Developing With Foreign Investment. Edited by Vincent Cable and Bishnodat Persaud. Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1987. Pp.viii + 327. £25. ISBN 0 7099 4825 5.

International Industry and Business: Structural Change, Industrial Policy and Industry Strategies. By Robert H. Ballance. London: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Pp.xxi + 357. ISBN 0 04 339037 4 and 339038 2.

Trade Among Multinationals: Intra‐Industry Trade and National Competitiveness. By Donald C. MacCharles. London: Croom Helm, 1987. Pp. xiv + 207. £30. ISBN 07099 4618 X.

Myths and Reality of External Constraints on Development. By James Riedel. Alder‐shot: Gower for the Trade Policy Research Centre, London, 1987. Pp.xvi + 111. ISBN 0566 05336 5.

International Economic Restructuring and the Regional Community. Edited by Herman Muegge and Walter Stohr. Aldershot: Gower, 1987. Pp.x + 404. £28.50. ISBN 0566 05478 1.     

时代主题转换与党的对外工作转变

改革开放30年来，中国共产党的对外工作发生了历．史性的转折和变化。概括起来，就是过去那种从无产阶级“世界革命”的传统战略出发、以“支援世界革命”为己任的“党的对外工作”，在“和平与发展”取代“战争与革命”成为时代主题的新历史条件下，转变发展为“新时期党的对外工作”了，即以党的创新理论为总指导思想、以国家利益为最高准则、以服务于国家总体外交为直接目标、以为国内社会主义建设争取和平有利的国际环境为长期战略任务的“中国特色政党外交”了。     

Fiscal incentives and direct foreign investment in less developed countries

This study found no support for the belief by the governments of most less developed countries (LDCs) that the provision of fiscal incentives is necessary to attract direct foreign investment and that the greater the generosity of these incentive programmes the greater would be the level of such investment. What mattered were the presence of natural resources and a proven record of economic performance. The provision of incentives could not compensate for the absence of either of these two factors. The study is a cross‐sectional one of 27 LDCs for the period 1965–73.     

State power, state embeddedness, and national development in less developed countries: A cross-national analysis

In this article, we test the prevailing statist argument about the state’s contribution to economic development in less developed countries (LDCs). State power in terms of centralized control of societal resources has been long considered a primary factor for economic growth. From the embeddedness perspective, the state’s effective embedding in the economy advances productive growth, while state power actually operates as a structural precondition of such policy action. Featured in our measurement are representative and financial embeddedness (operationalized as the central government’s tax income and its lending to the private sector and local states, respectively). The empirical testing is based on a pooled cross-national data of sixty-one underdeveloped countries. As indicated from modeling both manufacturing growth and increase in GNP per capita as dependent variables (during the period 1975–1990), the state power variable does not produce expected growth outcomes. However, two embedded state measures display significant but sectorbiased growth effects only for manufacturing production. Herein we further compare strong state power countries with weak ones, concluding that state power serves as a structural prerequisite so that late industrialization for LDCs can benefit from the growth coalitions in which the central state collaborates with (rather than dominates) actors at the subnational level of society and authorities. Ming-Chang Tsai teaches sociology in Taiwan. He was Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Social, behavioral, and Economic Research, University of California at Santa Barbara (1998–99). He wishes to thank professors Diane Davis and Ian Roxborough for invaluable comments. An earlier version of this article was presented in the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 1997, Toronto.     

重庆两江新区——新十年西部大开发开篇之作

在国家吹响新一轮西部大开发进军号角的重要时刻,重庆两江新区应运而生了。这是继浦东、滨海之后,国务院批准的第三个国家级开发开放新区,也是国家推进新十年西部大开发的突破口和新引擎。承载着改革开放由沿海向内陆推进、经济发展由外需向内需转型的国家战略,两江新区正式扬帆启航。     

Where does your coffee dollar go?: The division of income and surplus along the coffee commodity chain

This article analyzes the division of the total income and surplus generated along the coffee commodity chain during the period 1971–1995. Until the late 1980s, coffee growers and producing states retained over a third of the total income and about half of the total surplus that was available. This was due in part to the collective actions of coffee-producing states, which led to the imposition of a regulatory regime involving export quotas, creating rents for the producing countries. By the late 1980s, coffee TNCs had consolidated their control over core markets, and began to use their market power to increase their shares of both income and surplus. This shift was greatly accelerated by the breakdown of the export quota regime in 1989. The article concludes that these results necessitate a reformulation of commodity chain analysis. John M. Talbot received his doctorate in sociology from UC, Berkeley, this year. His dissertation is titled “Grounds for Agreement: The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain.” This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., August 19–23, 1995. Portions of this analysis were also presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, April 6–8, 1995.     

秣马厉兵、剑指白宫——漫话希拉里竞选美国总统

尽管美国总统大选的到来还有两年多的时间,希拉里迄今亦未正式宣布参加2008年总统竞选,但是随着¨月中期选举的到来,"美国即将诞生历史上第一位女总统"的话题,正在快速升温.     

江北水城·运河古都欢迎您观光兴业——专访山东省聊城市市长林峰海

记者:聊城市是山东省西部重要城市,也是重要的交通枢纽,自古以来就是商贾重地,近年来的发展引人注目,能否请您介绍下聊城的发展状况?     

“一带一路”沿线国家来华留学生教育现状及市场拓展路径分析

随着“一带一路”建设的不断推进,沿线国家成为来华留学生的主要生源国,沿线国家来华留学教育市场前景广阔,呈现总体规模不断扩大,生源地分布较集中,留学生学习类别、学习层次及专业需求分布不均衡,学生经费来源以自费为主等特点。鉴此,中国可加强“一带一路”框架下的政府间合作,并借此推动沿线国家来华留学教育发展;完善相关法律法规和体制机制,为沿线国家学生来华留学提供制度保障;提升教学质量,增强高校竞争力和吸引力;加强宣传引导,提升便利性,做好相关服务,提高沿线各国学生的来华意愿。     

Popular with the Robots: Accusation and Automation in the Argentine Presidential Elections, 2015

Accusations of dishonourable campaigning have featured in every Argentine presidential election since the return to democracy in 1983. Yet, allegations made in the elections this October and November looked different from earlier ones. The campaign team for the centre-leftist candidate Daniel Scioli argued that Cambiemos, the centre-right coalition led by Mauricio Macri, was abusing the political affordances of social media by running a Twitter campaign via ‘50,000’ fake accounts. This paper presents evidence suggesting that both teams promoted their campaigns through automation on Twitter. Although the Macri campaign was subtler, both teams appear to have used automation to the same end: maximizing the diffusion of party content and creating an inflated image of their popularity. Neither team attempted to muffle or engage with opposing voices through automation. We argue that in a political culture fixated on the appearance of popularity, the use of automation to simulate mass support appears an organic development as campaigning enters the still unregulated Twittersphere. We compare our findings to the uses of automation in the Russian Twittersphere and conclude that there may be greater variation in the political usage of Twitter between political contexts than between different types of political event occurring in the same country.     

It Comes with the Territory: Why States Negotiate with Ethno-Political Organizations

Given that minority ethno-political organizations are generally weaker than states yet seek to change their policies or remove the ruling regime from power, why would negotiation occur? States prefer to ignore or repress such organizations, which typically have little to offer in return amidst negotiations that can legitimize them while delegitimizing the state. When a challenging organization establishes governing structures and controls movement in part of a state's territory, however, it can easily inflict significant economic and political costs on the state while also possessing a valuable asset to exchange for concessions. An organization with territorial control cannot be ignored, while the state will have a strong incentive to negotiate before the state loses more face, the group gains more legitimacy, neighboring states are more likely to invade, and the international community is more likely to formally recognize any facts on the ground as a new status quo. Our analysis of 118 organizations in the Middle East and North Africa from 1980–2004 reveals that territorial control is the most important determinant of intrastate negotiation. In regards to existing scholarship, this suggests that a certain type of successful violence works—not all violence and not only nonviolence—while certain types of strong organizations—those that control territory—are more likely to reach negotiations with the state than weak ones.