Political Economy of the Environment,Gender, and Resistance under Colonialism: Murang'a District,Kenya, 1910–1950

This article draws on interviews with women resettlement farmers in Wedza District, Zimbabwe, to trace changes in livelihood strategies and gender relations from 2000 to 2006. The research indicates a shrinking number of viable options for livelihoods, and the severe erosion of formerly critical activities. Thewomen interviewed see increases inmarital discord and collapse, with implications for family formation, social order, and survival. The article explores the linkages between changing livelihoods and gender relations, focusing especially on marriage in relation to agriculture and land issues, gendered incomes, sexuality, AIDS orphans and other effects of HIV/AIDS. Within this overall difficult context, the enduring ethic of caring and the buffering effects of people’s access to arable land and other natural resources are apparent. Throughout, the article discusses the theoretical implications of the research, participating in debates about regional conditions and theoretical understandings of labour, economy, livelihoods and gender in southern Africa.     

When States Implode: The Correlates of Africa’s civil wars, 1950–92

This article provides a systematic analysis of the extent to which political, economic, and cultural factors are associated with civil wars in sub-Saharan African states. Drawing on a theoretical argument that associates the likelihood of civil war with the tumult that arises from the simultaneous challenges of state building and nation building, several testable propositions are derived on the correlates of African civil wars. Results of logistic regression analyses indicate that previous colonial experience is a significant predictor to the likelihood of civil wars. It is also found that economic development reduces the probability of civil war while militarization increases it. Regime type played no significant role in African civil wars. Similarly, no support was found for the thesis that cultural factors are significantly associated with African civil war, which belies the notion that African civil wars are simply “ethnic conflicts.” It appears that politico-economic factors—instead of cultural ones—give rise to civil wars in Africa. Errol A. Henderson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science, Wayne State University. He has published articles on international war, foreign policy, domestic conflict, and international political economy inInternational Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, Peace & Change, andWorld Affairs.     

Does Oil Hinder Social Spending? Evidence from Dictatorships, 1972–2008

This paper examines the effects of natural resource abundance on social spending in dictatorships. Natural resources, particularly oil, provide authoritarian leaders with economic rents without widescale labor force participation. I argue that dependence on natural resource production thus reduces dictators’ incentive to invest in human capital, which is reflected in lower levels of social spending. Using a panel dataset of authoritarian regimes between 1972 and 2008, I find that oil abundance leads to significantly lower levels of social spending by authoritarian governments. The negative effects are especially prominent concerning expenditures for public education and health: when an authoritarian country earns ten more dollars per capita from oil production, per capita spending on education and health decreases by approximately 1%. Extended analysis shows that the negative impact of oil on social spending is peculiar to authoritarian regimes; no impact of oil wealth on social expenditures is found among democracies.     

Combating Coups d’état in Africa, 1950–2014

Recent years have seen African militaries attempt coups in virtually every geographic region, from Egypt to Lesotho and Guinea to Madagascar. They have targeted established democracies, infantile democratic experiments, increasingly authoritarian executives, power vacuums brought on by leader death, and—most recently in Burundi—leaders attempting to circumvent constitutional limitations on their tenure. These continuing acts perpetrated against regimes with such varied backdrops suggests that coups still afflict a wide range of states and remain a continuing threat to leader tenure. This is in contrast to the African Union’s emphasis on curbing the practice. This paper explores the African Union’s effectiveness to combat military coups, primarily focusing on the potential for sanctions to act as a deterrent to would-be coup plotters. The paper also considers potential limitations on the African Union’s (AU’s) ability to project power against certain states. Analyses for the years 1950–2014 indicate Africa has in fact witnessed a meaningful decline in coup activity, an impact even more pronounced than the end of the Cold War. Results also indicate that the AU’s effectiveness in deterring coups is not constrained in cases where they are expected to lack leverage.     

Gender as Survival: Women's Experiences of Deportation from Romania to the Soviet Union, 1945–1950

This paper offers hypotheses on the role that state social welfare measures can play in reflecting nationalism and in aggravating interethnic tensions. Social welfare is often overlooked in theoretical literature on nationalism, because of the widespread assumption that the welfare state promotes social cohesion. However, social welfare systems may face contradictions between the goal of promoting universal access to all citizens on the one hand, and social pressures to recognize particular groups in distinct ways on the other. Examples from the post-Soviet context (particularly Russia) are offered to illustrate the ways in which social welfare issues may be perceived as having ethnic connotations.     

Regional wages and economic development: A case study of manufacturing wages in India, 1950–1960

This paper examines some hypotheses with respect to the interregional wage variations in Indian manufacturing from 1950 to 1960. The choice of this period was determined by the availability of relevant data. It was found in an earlier study that the regional wage structure tended to be flexible during the period under consideration. In this paper, an attempt has been made to explain the inter‐regional wage differentials by analysing the data on trade unionism, per capita income, productivity, capital intensity, non‐primary employment and consumer prices. It is argued that the level of regional wage differentials can be explained by relative differentials in productivity and in trade unionism, but the change in wage differentials depends upon the changing capital intensity in respective regions.     

Governmental Corruption and Social Change in New Zealand: Using Scenarios, 1950–2020

New Zealand has long enjoyed a reputation as a country with a corruption-free state sector, and ranks very highly on the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (meaning its corruption levels are perceived to be extremely low). However, there is prima facie evidence to suggest that this situation may be changing, not dramatically but significantly. While the state sector changes of the 1980s and early 1990s may be having some impact on this shift, it also has to be understood in the context of wider societal changes, which are probably more decisive. After some brief conceptual clarification, the article presents three scenarios sketching past (1950s/1960s), present (1990s–2006) and future (2006–2020) social and governmental conditions thought to be relevant to corruption levels.     

“The (final) solution of the Gypsy-question:” continuities in discourses about Roma in Hungary, 1940s–1950s

Although the repression and elimination of Roma from Hungarian society in the 1940s did not reach the same extent as in the German and Austrian part of the Third Reich, their characterization as lazy and work-shy, used to justify their persecution, was similar. This paper establishes the presence of racial hygienic discourse related to Roma during the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s in Hungary, and traces its survival and influence on regional policy-making in the postwar period. It furthermore explores the transformation and adaptation of racism and eugenics to the socialist ideology of equality based on citizens’ participation in productive work in the early state socialist period, including the first Party declaration on the situation of Roma in Hungary in 1961. Specific attention is paid to the role of medical experts who discussed the “radical solution of the Gypsy-question” in the early 1940s and the immediate years following World War II. Reflecting on wider transformations of racism in the postcolonial and post-World War II period in Europe and North America, the paper contributes to scholarship that complicates the evaluation of the state socialist past, including the connection between medicine and politics in Cold War Europe.     

Workers' Councils in the Service of the Market: New Archival Evidence on the Origins of Self-Management in Yugoslavia 1948–1950

This article provides a new synthesis on the origins of self-management in Yugoslavia on the basis of new archival research. It rejects the dominant view in the historiography that self-management arose merely as an ideological justification for the split with Stalin's USSR in 1948. Rather, it demonstrates that the introduction of workers' councils was part of an elaborate effort on the part of the Communist leadership to return to its pre-1948, proto-‘reform Communist’ strategy that was remarkably open to interaction with the world market. This is shown to have implications for understanding Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, the Cold War and Communism.