Trading in development: norms and institutions in the making/unmaking of European Union–African,Caribbean and Pacific trade and development cooperation

This paper offers a contribution to recent debates on European Union (EU) external trade and development policy, with a specific focus on the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries. The question asked is why the EU encountered such difficulties in the attempt to translate its normative preferences for freer trade and closer economic integration into a series of binding agreements? Drawing on both economic constructivist and historical institutionalist insights, it is argued that the case for reform initially rested on a strong convergence between institutions and ideas, enabling the EU to discursively present desired policy reforms as necessary to satisfy World Trade Organisation trade rules. However, in due course, the institutional dynamics behind the latter began to diverge from the EU's policy preferences and blunt its norm-based argument – thus creating the space for transnational coalitions to, first, question and, ultimately, undermine aspects the EU's trade and development prospectus for the ACP.     

Passive revolution in Brazil: struggles over hegemony,religion and development 1964–2007

This article examines transformations of the role of religion in Brazil, focused on two transitions within the national political economy. A Gramscian framework of analysis is used to investigate the shift from import substitution industrialisation to neoliberalism, and the varying role of religion within class struggles in each period. The central argument is that Brazil has moved from a period of ‘passive revolution’ to one of ‘hegemony’, and that the role of religion has changed significantly in this period. The article examines ideas, institutions and social forces, with particular attention to the Landless Workers Movement and its relationship with Liberation Theology.     

Reconceptualising the migration – development nexus: diasporas,globalisation and the politics of exclusion

The presence of a sizeable expatriate African population constitutes a potentially exploitable, if undeveloped, resource that represents a significant developmental challenge for the continent. Problematically the global division of labour and power, as well as differences of region, class, generation, ethnicity and race, are not properly recognised within the existing scholarship or development policy. What is clear is that diasporas do have a substantial role to play in development on the African continent. Further theoretical and empirical investigation is necessary to investigate the practical significance, nature and content of diasporic identifications and activities. By setting these against the structural backdrop of the global economy and the closely associated ideology of globalisation, this paper seeks to provide a new basis for understanding the role of the diaspora in development. This has considerable policy implications as to which diasporic populations should be targeted for developmental purposes.     

Internal migration in Turkey: Socioeconomic characteristics by destination and type of move, 1965–70

Based on examination of internal migration in Turkey during the 1965-70 period, the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of migrants and the variation in these properties by type of move undertaken (first, repeat, and return migration) and by choice of destination are described. The volume, rates, and differentials of migration are discussed in this context. A very rapid rural-urban migration occurred in the 1950-70 period; urban population increased from 18.8 to 35.8% of the total. The emphasis on industrialization, the mechanization and relatively slower growth of agricultural production, the scarcity of new lands to cultivate, and the construction of a large road network connecting cities with their hinterland and rural communities contributed to this increased movement. The 1970 Turkish census questionnaire included a question on "place of usual residence 5 years ago" for the 1st time. Along with information on place of birth and usual residence in 1970, the census provides information on place of residence at 3 points in time. The study is based on a 1/1000 sample selected from the household records of the 1970 Population Census of Turkey. Discussion is restricted to the migration of the adult population; the migration of children (up to age 15), which is viewed as involuntary is excluded. The working file contains 20,602 cases. Variables analyzed include age, sex, education, labor force status, occupation, and place of residence in 1970. The migration-defining variables are province of birth and usual residence in 1965 and 1970. Census data indicated that 9.2% of the population 15 years of age and older changed their place of residence during the 1965-70 period, moving to another province. An additional 4% moved to another place within the same province. There were strong indications of stage migration, if movements both within and between provinces are considered. All urban places showed population grew through intraprovincial migration. Only large metropolitan cities have grown through interprovincial migration. Migrants from rural areas 1st move to towns and cities within the same province and then make a 2nd move to other, mostly larger, urban areas and metropolitan cities. The majority of the interprovincial migrants (60%) were interurban movers, and only 1/5 were rural to urban migrants. +a large group of repeat migrants who moved primarily between urban places, were relatively older, better educated and skilled, and more likely to be employed in white-collar occupations than their counterparts. Although interprovincial migration was dominated by young and single males, there was considerable variation in migrant properties according to the type of move made and the place of destination. Socioeconomic characteristics of the 2 basic migration types are included.     

Soviet legacies,organized crime,and economic gangsterism: Russia, 1995–2010

In countries like Russia, where legal institutions providing political accountability and protection of property rights are weak, some elite actors accept the use of violence as a tool in political and economic competition. The intensity of this violent exposure may vary depending on the position the province had had in the Soviet administrative hierarchy. The higher the province's position before 1991, the greater the intensity of business violence one is likely to observe there in post-communist times, because the Soviet collapse left a more gaping power vacuum and lack of working informal rules in regions with limited presence of traditional criminal organizations. Post-Soviet entrepreneurs also often find it worthwhile to run for office or financially back certain candidates in order to secure a privileged status and the ability to interpret the law in their favor. Businessmen-candidates themselves and their financial backers behind the scenes may become exposed to competitive pressures resulting in violence during election years, because their competitors may find it hard to secure their position in power through the existing legal or informal non-violent means. To test whether Soviet legacies and Provincial elections indeed cause spikes in commerce-motivated violence, this project relies on an original dataset of more than 6000 attacks involving business interests in 74 regions of Russia, in 1991–2010. The results show that only legislative elections cause increases in violence while there is no firm evidence that executive polls have a similar effect.     

Rock 'n' roll nation: counterculture and dissent in Romania, 1965–1975

A vibrant countercultural and dissident movement developed in Romania between 1965 and 1975. Young Romanians combined elements of the global youth movement with local cultural and political practices. Thus, Romanian counterculture and dissent shared the era's hippie aesthetic and anti-authoritarianism, but was highly isolationist, vehemently antisocialist and heavily couched in the language of the nation and nationalism. Furthermore, during this early Ceau?escu period, the socialist regime attracted some level of nonconformist support through a program of reform, opposition to Soviet interference, and nationalist rhetoric. These conclusions demonstrate that the rubric of 1960s counterculture needs to be extended to include a variety of ideological and cultural positions beyond the New Left that scholars generally emphasize. Furthermore, scholarly avoidance of Ceau?escu's early period has obscured the existence of an alternative culture, and has led to an un-nuanced interpretation of Romania's postwar history.     

South–South cooperation and the future of development assistance: mapping actors and options

International development cooperation is undergoing fundamental changes. New – or often re-emerging – actors have gained importance during the past two decades, and are increasingly challenging the traditional approach to development cooperation associated with the members of the Development Assistance Committee of the oecd. Their supposedly alternative paradigm, ‘South–South cooperation’ (ssc), has been recognised as an important cooperation modality, but faces contradictions that are not too different from those of its North–South counterpart. ssc providers are highly heterogeneous in terms of policies, institutional arrangements, and engagement with international forums and initiatives. This article contributes to current debates on ssc by mapping the diversity of its actors – based on illustrative case studies from the first and second ‘wave’ of providers – and by presenting and discussing some possible scenarios for the future of ssc within the international aid system.     

The goals and reality of the water–food–energy security nexus: the case of China and its southern neighbours

The so-called ‘nexus’ approach has recently been promoted as addressing externalities across the water, food and energy sectors, thus helping to achieve ‘water/energy/food security for all’, ‘equitable and sustainable growth’ and a ‘resilient and productive environment’. While these are noble goals, this article argues that the reality on the ground appears to be taking a different direction, at least when it comes to China and its neighbours in South and Southeast Asia. There, a new era of large-scale water infrastructure development is creating several security-related problems, which represent serious challenges to the nexus goals. These challenges include food–energy tensions, human security threats and ecological risks. These challenges can also be linked to rising friction surrounding the management of water, food and energy resources in the region. The article argues that, in order for the nexus goals to be achieved in China and the countries on its southern periphery, there must first be increased awareness of this nexus among policy-making elites.     

Participation Denied: the Global Environment Facility,its universal blueprint,and the Mexico–Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in Chiapas

This article examines the implementation of the Global Environment Facility's (GEF) Mexico–Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in Chiapas, Mexico, in order to explore how stakeholder participation is increasingly employed as a tool of conservation's neoliberalisation. This requires an understanding of participation via the corridor as productive, in that it facilitates the production of new, albeit fictitious, kinds of biodiversity in the commodity form, and of new modes of social reproduction increasingly mediated by market relations, as access to common property resources and the necessities of life are progressively restricted to one's ability to pay. In this way the corridor produces the conditions under which a ‘market citizenship’ can flourish, with participation re-imagined as a means through which this end is achieved.     

The Exceptionalism of Housing in the Ideology and Politics of Early Communist Romania (1945–1965)

The article analyses the exceptionalism of housing during the early communist period in Romania, in particular the extent to which the regime's ambivalent policies regarding housing undermined the overall political and ideological goal of dismantling private property. Focusing on appropriations, restitutions and new construction in the city of Timi¸oara and the surrounding region, the article emphasises conflicting and inconsistent policies regarding housing and the consequences of these policies. Housing's double meaning as home and asset further complicated the overall ideological mission of denaturalising bourgeois private property, and provided a basis for the continuing relevance of pre-communist legal ideologies and consciousness of property rights during this period. The article is based on documentary and archival research conducted in the city of Timi¸oara, Romania, in 2007–2008.     

Soviet Industry in the World Spotlight: The Domestic Dilemmas of Soviet Foreign Economic Relations, 1955–1965

The mid-1950s marked the beginning of tremendous growth in the Soviet Union's foreign economic relations. Based on archival research, this article argues that this growth masked two contradictory processes. On the one hand, Kremlin leaders encouraged ever more economic engagement with the world. On the other hand, the Soviet system discouraged industrial managers from producing for export, and it often caused precious imports to be wasted. This struggle between industry and the Kremlin over foreign trade gave impetus to the treadmill of reforms launched by the Khrushchev leadership.     

Factor Proportions,Openness and Factor Prices in Kenya 1965–2000

This study analyses how changes in factor abundance and openness have affected relative factor prices in Kenya since 1965, using cointegration analysis and error correction models of relative factor prices. We find that factor proportions determined relative factor prices in the long run, while openness, measured by three different proxies, possibly had a short run effect on relative factor returns. The only deviation from this pattern occurred during the latter half of the 1990s when there was rapid wage growth, mainly due to labour market deregulation.     

Educational human capital and levels of income: Evidence from states in India, 1965 – 92

Abstract

This paper examines the long-run (steady-state) relationship between levels of educational human capital and levels of income for the 15 major states of India between 1965 and 1992. The relationship is estimated using the Pooled Mean Groups (PMG) technique; which produces common long-run coefficients but allows heterogeneity of the short-run adjustment parameters. The results suggest that levels of educational human capital, proxied by high school enrollment rates, have a robust positive impact on steady-state levels of income. This is true for male and female education, and the regressions also suggest that states which have larger gender-gaps in education have lower steady-state incomes. The estimated relationship is robust to the inclusion of alternative measures, added controls, and variation in the degree of state coverage.     

Crossing borders: development,learning and the North – South divide

While the validity of categories like ‘First’ and ‘Third’ World or ‘North’ and ‘South’ has been increasingly questioned, there have been few attempts to consider how learning between North and South might be conceived. Drawing on a range of perspectives from development and postcolonial scholarship, this paper argues for the creative possibility of learning between different contexts. This involves a conceptualisation of learning that is at once ethical and indirect: ethical because it transcends a liberal integration of subaltern knowledge, and indirect because it transcends a rationalist tendency to limit learning to direct knowledge transfer between places perceived as ‘similar’. This challenge requires a consistent interrogation of the epistemic and institutional basis and implications of the North – South divide, and an insistence on developing progressive conceptions of learning.     

South–South cooperation and the international development battlefield: between the oecd and the UN

This article discusses the transformation in development architecture, focusing on the role of emerging powers and the growing relevance of South–South cooperation (ssc). Drawing on a conceptual toolkit based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it aims to approach ssc as a narrative and to understand the processes of contestation that have turned international development into a battlefield since the end of the 1990s. The article argues that the emergence of ssc has contributed to decentring the field of international development, both in terms of the agents authorised to play and the practices considered legitimate. Within this process the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, led by the oecd’s Development Assistance Committee, and the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum have become two sites on the battlefield on which the borders of international development are being redrawn.     

Chronology of Jihadism in Western Europe 1994–2007: Planned,Prepared, and Executed Terrorist Attacks

Considering Europe's long history of terrorist violence by separatist, leftist and rightwing groups, terrorism by militant Sunni Islamists has until recently been a marginal phenomenon. However, empirical data presented in this chronology suggests it constitutes a growing and increasingly lethal threat, and a worrisome trend in the context of increased tensions between the Muslim world and the West in the wake of 9/11 and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which needs to be dealt with on many levels—socially, politically, and economically. The current chronology is meant to serve as a tool for conducting academic research on the scope of the threat, and for mapping incidents that might be surveyed in more depth to create a better understanding of its organizational, operational, and motivational patterns.     

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.