Developing the British Virgin Islands: The first Crown colony

In an analysis of the administration of government in the British Virgin Islands the Deputy Governor's use of team or collective management techniques stands out as an important factor in the success of the Islands in coping with problems of small scale and of sparse resources. This method of reaching general decisions may be rooted in the country's African heritage, which was little touched by the brief attempt of English planters to develop a colony in the Islands. In any event, this heritage may be reinforceable as a bulwark against Americanization.     

Strictly Australian: Tourism and ethnic diversity

The tourist industry has abandoned mono‐cultural images of Australia and is now in the business of selling the country's cultural diversity to the world. But multicultural tourism, or touristic multiculturalism, present a new set of problems and dilemmas for advocates of cultural diversity. Tourism's nostalgic appeal to cultural authenticity, and to culture as spectacle, or ‘fashion accessory’, is of little relevance to life in contemporary Australia. This paper offers examples of multicultural events produced for the tourist market in order to highlight conflicts between different images of multiculturalism.     

Development problems and planning in a resource-poor Pacific country: The case of Tuvalu

Tuvalu is an independent microstate and this account of its economic circumstances and prospects provides the context for discussion of administrative problems. The paper outlines the economic structure of the country and examines its economic resources and their potential; demographic trends are given attention, and the country's heavy dependence on foreign aid is explained. These features carry implications for the forms of public administration and development planning, and Tuvalu's current development plan and aspects of its public administration are discussed with this in mind. The article serves as a case study of the economy of a micro state and implications for administration in such a state.     

The domestic politics of international development in South Korea: stakeholders and competing policy discourses

Abstract

The paper examines the domestic politics surrounding South Korea's foreign aid policy. It delineates the institutional characteristics and strategic interests of key government and non-government stakeholders, and suggests an analytical framework to comprehend the country's aid policy regime. It suggests that two competing policy discourses exist – one emphasising ‘intellectual leadership’ and the other ‘ethical leadership’ as the key principle of aid policy. In practice, the country's political leadership promulgates a complex amalgam of these discourses in alignment with their own political imperatives and interests. The paper discusses ‘Global Saemaul Undong’ as such an example under the incumbent Park Geun-Hye administration.     

Myanmar: the challenges of power

Despite the National League for Democracy's resounding victory in Myanmar's November 2015 general election, the country's political future is far from clear. There remain major obstacles to a peaceful transfer of power from the military-supported government to one led by Aung San Suu Kyi.     

Terrorized economies

In this paper we estimate the macroeconomic consequences of terrorism using panel data for 147 countries for the period 1968–2002. The results reveal that the potential gains to a country from reducing terrorism are quite large, although the specific estimates depend on a country's population, base level of output, and investment. We present estimates of the impact of terrorism on GDP, GDP growth, investment, consumer spending, and tourism. These estimates of the marginal impact of terrorism provide a threshold against which a country's expenditures on anti-terrorism can be weighed.     

Syria crisis highlights importance of Chemical Weapons Convention

Allegations in March by both Syria's Assad regime and its opponents that the other side had used chemical weapons in the country's increasingly bitter civil war have served to highlight the challenges surrounding their prohibition.     

Syrian war worsens Lebanon's malaise

A string of bombings, kidnappings and clashes between Islamist factions and the military has rattled Lebanon in recent months. The spillover from Syria's civil war has aggravated the country's political and sectarian divisions, leading to institutional paralysis and outbreaks of violence.     

OVERCOMING A DECADE OF CRISIS: ZIMBABWE'S LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN TRANSITION

The world's attention has focused on Zimbabwe as the country has moved from the turmoil of the 2008 elections to a tentative democratic transition under the current Inclusive Government. The country's newly elected local authorities and an apparent interest in decentralization have been largely ignored in the process, however. This essay thus provides an extensive, survey‐based examination of local governance in Zimbabwe as of 2009. Four areas are discussed. First, with the growth of the political opposition to the ruling regime, local governance has also suffered from the deep polarization among all the country's institutions. The inexperience of the new local councilors vis‐à‐vis local administration officials also holds significant ramifications. Second, although local officials believe that public participation in decision‐making is strong, citizen involvement is actually quite weak. Third, reeling from the country's 2008 economic crisis, local authorities were operating as best as they could on minimal income and barely functioning in many areas. Financial transfers ended long ago; revenue generation remains poor. Finally, this essay captures the poor state of public services. Achievement of a national democratic consensus, decentralization that actually promotes democratic local governance and strengthening once‐strong local institutional capacity will determine the future progress of local governance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparative advantage and trade liberalization in China

The relevance of Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage to the design of trade policy by developing and socialist countries is the subject of heated argument, particularly among Marxists who have yet to produce a satisfactory theory of international exchange based on value analysis. The debates among economists in China on their country's ‘open-door’ policy revealed the complexity of the central and related issues. Besides the possibility of being exploited and becoming dependent on developed economies, on which theorists of unequal exchange have sounded a good many warnings, developing countries also face other problems and dangers when they allow themselves to be guided by Ricardo's doctrine in conducting external trade, as the Chinese experience of trade liberalization in 1979–85 vividly demonstrated. This paper first presents an interpretative summary of the debates among the Chinese economists and then analyses what went wrong in the process of liberalization.     

Unintended consequences: social policy,state institutions and the ‘stalling’ of the Malaysian industrialization project

Abstract

This paper examines the relation of particular forms of social and labour market policy to economic development. Taking the history of Malaysian industrialization as its empirical case, the paper assesses the unintended consequences of redistribution policy, on the one hand, and migration policy, on the other, for the limited upgrading of the country's electronics industry. It argues that, while the former has been central to social harmony in Malaysia's multi-racial society, it has contributed to the underdevelopment of small and medium-sized firms capable of linking with the TNCs on the basis of knowledge-intensive and higher value-added operations. Migration policy, on the other hand, has allowed manufacturers to have continued access to supplies of low-cost, lower-skilled labour that have released the pressures that would otherwise have been there for technological and skill upgrading in the electronics industry. Only in Penang, where regional state institutions have intervened to encourage SME upgrading, has the national picture been moderated. Malaysia's industrialization project emerged at time when export competition in manufactured commodities was less intense than it is now. Largely as a result of federal government priorities and for other reasons explored in the paper, advantage was not taken of this ‘window of opportunity’. As a consequence, the country's industrialization project – exemplified by its electronics industry – is now ‘stalling’ in the sense that it remains locked into low- to medium-technology operations. With the rise of China as a manufacturing exporter, this is a dangerous situation for a country's principal industry to be in.     

Ukraine: risks to economic stabilisation

An agreement with the IMF offers sizeable external support and a path to transforming Ukraine's ailing economy and business climate. But it remains to be seen whether the country's new government will be willing and able to stick to the conditions of this far-reaching programme.     

Serbia: new leadership,same challenges

The results of Serbia's 2012 elections, which saw the incumbent pro-European administration ousted from power by considerably more nationalistic candidates with ties to Serbia's wartime leadership, were greeted with dismay in many countries. But rather than reverting to the bellicose rhetoric of the 1990s, as some had feared, Serbia's new leaders are deploying a strategy of pragmatism in tackling the country's most enduring issues.     

Rural development management in Nepal,Part I: Coordination in the Rasuwa-Nuwakot Integrated Rural Development Programme

Rural development management in Nepal has been criticized for more than a decade now on the grounds of the country's weak aid-absorbing capacity, administrative slowness and poor project management. Though several reforms of the rural development planning and management systems have been staged, at present coordination in integrated rural development projects remains weak. The paper reports on the empirical findings of research on mechanisms, procedures, organizational arrangements and problems of coordination. Although the country's environment, and its socioeconomic and cultural constraints, may negatively influence smooth operations in implementing integrated programmes, several policy considerations for improvement may be formulated. Among these, organizational reform with decentralization and reduction of the number of offices involved, strengthening the resource management system, especially budget release and personnel motivation, and a more integrated method of policy, programme and project formulation are the issues considered most important by the government officers themselves. Part II will appear in vol. 7, no. 3 of this journal, and examines the implementation and management of rural development in the Karnali and Bheri districts of the Mid-Western Development Region of Nepal.     

Jews and coloureds in London's East End

In October 1981, Australia's Federal Commissioner for Community Relations said that the country's problem is ‘not blatant racism of the South African variety’ but ‘attitudinal discrimination’.     

Pakistan's Sharif: testing relationships

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's new prime minister, faces important challenges if he is to improve his country's economic and security situation, as well as make progress in relationships with Kabul, New Delhi and Washington. His first priority, however, will be to forge a good working relationship with the military.     

The 2011 general and presidential elections in Singapore

For the first time in Singapore's history, two elections were held in a year. In 2011, Singaporeans voted in a general election on 7 May and in another competitive presidential election on 27 August. Faced with a stronger opposition force and an emboldened electorate, the ruling People's Action Party won the elections but achieved the worst results since the country's independence.     

Political instability and growth in dictatorships

We model growth in dictatorships facing each period an endogenous probability of “political catastrophe'' that would extinguish the regime's wealth extraction ability. Domestic capital exhibits a bifurcation point determining economic growth or shrinkage. With low initial domestic capital the dictator plunders the country's resources and the economy shrinks. With high initial domestic capital the economy eventually grows faster than is socially optimal.     

The political economy of education and skills in South Korea: democratisation,liberalisation and education reform in comparative perspective

The success story of Korean economic development is intimately linked with the so-called developmental state; and education policy, as part of centrally orchestrated industrial policy, played a critical role in the country's rapid industrialisation, which allowed for high employment rates, relatively modest social inequality and remarkable social mobility. However, the Korean success story has started to show ‘cracks’ – with labour market dualisation, rising inequality and ‘over-education’. While acknowledging the importance of the East Asian financial crisis as external shock for the Korean political economy, we suggest more fundamental problems in the socio-economic and socio-political underpinnings of the developmental state and its education and skills formation system for understanding how Korea's economic and education miracle turned into ‘education inflation’, skills mismatch and social polarisation.     

Rural local government finance in Kenya: The case of Murang'a County Council

The Murang'a County Council is recognized in Kenya as one of the country's most effective rural local authorities. Compared to other county councils, Murang'a raises substantial revenues and provides a wide variety of services. This case study presents some background on the local economy of Murang'a District, details available information about the county council's excellent fiscal performance, and highlights some of the major factors behind the effectiveness of Murang'a in resource mobilization and service delivery.