Enterprise Growth and Survival in Vietnam: Does Government Support Matter?

This paper analyses whether direct government assistance during start-up and other forms of interaction with the state sector have influenced the long-run performance of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. Using three partly overlapping surveys during the period 1990–2000, we find strong effects on firm dynamics from interaction with state institutions. Enterprises which have the state sector as their main customer perform better. This is so for both survival and growth. Moreover, temporary tax exemptions during firm start-up had a separate and positive influence on long-run growth for non-household enterprises and initial credit support seems to benefit rural firms.     

Multinationals as Stabilisers? Economic Crisis,Access to Finance,and Employment Growth

This article examines the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile. We find that employment in manufacturing plants has been drastically reduced during the economic crisis. Our findings reveal that multinationals are more likely to exit contributing to the employment contraction during the crisis, but surviving foreign firms experience lower employment reductions than domestic enterprises. These results are not fully consistent with the idea that multinationals are less affected by an economic crisis and that they may act as stabilisers.     

The Dynamics of Party-System Supply and Demand in Poland, 1997–2007. Cleavage Change or Shapeless Shifting?

The 2007 Polish general election confirmed a significant shift in patterns of elite political competition, as the inherited ‘regime divide’ was superseded by a ‘transition divide’ defined by the ‘liberal-orthodox’ model of post-communist reform. However, the existing literature on Polish voting behaviour lacks diachronic analyses of the changing relationships between structures, attitudes, party preferences and voting behaviour. This article seeks to fill that gap. It finds that there was no clear evidence of cleavage change over the period: there was more consistency than flux in preferences, and limited shifts in the influence of particular variables on voting behaviour.     

When Faced with Income and Asset Shocks,Do Poor Rural Households in Vietnam Smooth Food Consumption or Assets?

Vietnamese rural households are exposed to severe covariate and idiosyncratic shocks. However, these households are remarkably resilient and have steadily increased real income and consumption over the survey period 2006 to 2012. To explain household strategies to cope with shocks we test three theoretical models: the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH), Complete Market Hypothesis (CMH), and Asset Smoothing Theory (AST). There is support for AST as households smooth productive assets rather than consumption; and for CMH as households smooth consumption against idiosyncratic, but not covariate shocks. There is no support for PIH.     

‘How Can I Say it … in a More Tolerant Way?’ Ambiguity,Ambivalence and Contradiction in Youth Dialogue on Ethnic Tolerance and Intolerance

Although survey data identify no significant predictor of intolerance among the Russian population, young people are considered to display heightened levels of ethnic intolerance and radical variants of xenophobia. Drawing on survey and semi-structured interview data from a study of patriotism among young people in two cities in the North-West region of Russia, this article explores the strength of ethnic self-identification and ethnically exclusive notions of Russianness and compares levels and forms of ethnic intolerance. Identifying that routine expression of xenophobic sentiments coexists alongside a commitment to principles of ethnic equality, the article considers what the ambiguities and contradictions in the articulation of intolerance tell us about how young people negotiate complex contemporary multicultural societies.     

Things Can Only Get Better? Changing Views of the Past,Present and Future in the Former Soviet Union

Previous research has reported substantial levels of nostalgia for the Soviet era among citizens of some of the independent republics that emerged from its collapse. We report new analyses from eight former Soviet republics, and from two surveys, in 2001 and 2010, comparing attitudes to government in the Soviet period and at the time of the surveys, as well as expectations for the future. Everywhere, views of the past have become less positive and those of the present more positive. However, both the views in each survey and the change between each of them vary among countries and socio-demographic groups.