Community resilience: a policy tool for local government?

In many countries, local government has been a prime target of austerity measures. In response, local authorities are exploring a new repertoire of policy approaches in a bid to provide more with less. In England, local authorities have been drawn to community resilience as a pragmatic response to the challenge of deploying shrinking resources to support communities exposed to social and economic disruption. This application of resilience thinking is not without its challenges. It demands a working definition of community resilience that recognises the potential for communities to prove resilient to shocks and disruptions, but avoids blaming them for their predicament. There is also the practical challenge of developing and targeting interventions to promote and protect resilience. This paper sets out to explore these issues and establish the potential utility of community resilience as a policy tool through case study analysis in the city of Sheffield.     

ASEAN Initiatives to combat Haze pollution: An assessment of regional cooperation in public policy‐making

Over the last 25 years, Southeast Asia had been affected by significant smoke pollution (commonly referred to as the haze), which has mainly emanated from the widespread burning of forests and scrubs by smallholders and plantation operators within Indonesia. The haze has seriously affected air quality in the neighbouring countries. The article will consider the concerted efforts of the states of ASEAN to deal jointly with the problem, through various initiatives culminating in the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution of 2002. The article will then assess the design and impact of these initiatives, and will argue that their success will depend particularly on the standards of governance and administration in Indonesia.     

Financial crises as catalysts for regional cooperation? Chances and obstacles for financial integration in ASEAN+3, MERCOSUR and the eurozone

This article compares and analyses the different answers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations+3 (ASEAN+3), Mercado Común del Dur (MERCOSUR) and the eurozone on financial crises in their respective regions. All three regions were hit by economic turmoil between 1997 and 2012, but whereas ASEAN+3 and the eurozone answered with establishing regional liquidity arrangements (RLAs) in order to fight future crises, financial cooperation did not take off in MERCOSUR. Thus, the paper asks why some regions establish RLAs in cases of crisis and others do not. It argues that the variance of regional financial integration in different world regions is due to different interests of regional powers in their respective regions. The regional powers of ASEAN+3 and the eurozone are institutionally and/or economically highly embedded within their respective regions, but this is not the case for Brazil in MERCOSUR. China and Japan suffered from negative externalities of the Asian crisis, and, consequently, have had an interest to stabilize their neighbours’ economies after the crisis. In contrast, Brazil was able to follow a beggar-thy-neighbour strategy at the turn of the millennium, which externalized some of the costs of Brazil's own economic crisis towards Argentina. As a result, Brazil has had no interest in providing liquidity for its regional neighbours after the crisis. France and Germany are not only economically but also institutionally highly embedded in the eurozone because they share a common currency with their regional neighbours. Thus, the stability of the eurozone is a vital interest for Europe's regional powers, and they devote significant resources to stabilize the economies of the eurozone's periphery.     

Common elements of efficiency wage theories: What relevance for developing countries?

Conventional labour economics argues that wages are determined by supply and demand and that the typical firm is a wage taker. Efficiency wage theories state that wages are endogenous to a firm's own optimising behaviour and that the wage rate determines the labour productivity. These theories raise questions regarding the effectiveness of expenditure‐reducing and expenditure‐switching adjustment policies. This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on efficiency wages. It examines alternative models, highlights the emphasis of empirical research towards industrial countries, and points out the need for a test based on the major implications of the theory.     

The role of ASEAN institutes of strategic and international studies in developing security cooperation in the Asia‐pacific region

As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) governments are facing new challenges, the need to re‐evaluate the significance of the track‐two activities has been recognised. As there has been insufficient research on the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), this article analyses their role in the development of security cooperation. It shows that ASEAN‐ISIS has contributed to the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) by analysing the common/cooperative security thinking, the establishment of an inter‐governmental forum for a security dialogue, and the extension of ASEAN's diplomatic style over a larger geographical area. As ASEAN‐ISIS has contributed to inter‐governmental cooperation by promoting ideas, this article concludes that the significance of their activities in contemporary Asian politics should be understood in terms of the introduction and promotion of such innovative ideas.     

Outlook for the ‘developing country’ category: a paradox of demise and continuity

In the 2016 edition of its World Development Indicators (WDI), the World Bank introduced an important change in the way it categorises countries: it explicitly stated the intention to eliminate the distinction of countries as ‘developing’ and ‘developed’. This decision represents the first time one of the world’s most powerful and influential international organisation has overtly decided to move away from this fuzzy-yet-ubiquitous terminology for categorising countries (and not proposing to replace the division). This paper takes this shift to discuss country groupings based on development levels, particularly the ‘developed’/’developing’ dichotomy, focusing on the latter term. The paper argues for a paradoxical scenario, wherein the label ‘developing’ will increasingly become analytically useless while concurrently retaining – or even strengthening – its power in the context of foreign policy strategies. The analysis details the motives behind this paradox and provides a reasoning for when and why the term’s usage is likely to be weakened or strengthened. Simply put, the ‘developed’/’developing’ dichotomy is weakening in its analytical capacity, mostly due to the increasing heterogeneity among countries under the ‘developing’ label and concurrent porosity of ‘boundaries’ between the two categories, while showing little sign of being phased as a term for self-identification.     

Private monetary transfers in rural china: Are families altruistic?

Monetary transfers between relatives may be motivated by altruism, or they may represent payments for services rendered. Data from a large 1988 household survey are used to test these hypotheses and to study the size and direction of transfers in rural China. The analysis suggests that altruism alone cannot explain the observed transfers and that exchange may be involved. Most of the money flows appear to be transfers from adult children to elderly parents and remittances from migrants. Child care is likely to be one of the main services that parents render to adult children in exchange for money.     

Internal factors of intermunicipal cooperation: what matters most and why?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the internal aspects of intermunicipal cooperation, providing a new and innovative approach to the cost effectiveness of municipal waste management. We examine a sample of 658 municipalities in the Czech Republic’s South Moravian Region and 205 cooperating municipalities separately during 2012–2014. The results, based on ordinary least-squares regression, show that cost reduction is significantly influenced by the institutional arrangement of intermunicipal cooperation, the participation of municipal representatives in management, and professional managers. The paper shows that a crucial role in cost reduction is played by internal factors that have been investigated only marginally so far. Cost increases are related to municipality sizes larger than 10,000 inhabitants and to profit-oriented behaviours of waste collection companies. The results differ in the size samples of municipalities; only the impact of institutional arrangement is significant in all groups of municipalities.     

Can elite corruption be a legitimate Machiavellian tool in an unruly world? The case of post-conflict Cambodia

Elite corruption may have a significant role in ending conflicts and shaping post-conflict development. This article enquires into the legitimacy accorded to such corruption. It reviews literature on post-conflict Cambodia, seeking evidence that academic commentaries, public opinion or elites themselves regard elite corruption as a legitimate Machiavellian tool for achieving other ends. Corruption has been an element of the style of government adopted by the dominant party in Cambodia, shaping both the achievement of peace and the uneven economic development that followed. Academic commentaries provide some implicit and explicit legitimation of corruption as a means to secure peace and to resist neoliberal policy settings by affording government discretionary resources and power. Meanwhile, public dissatisfaction with elite corruption appears to the most likely source of renewed violent conflict in Cambodia. How elite actors rationalise and legitimise corrupt behaviour remains poorly understood, and is deserving of more attention.     

State Building for Peace: a new paradigm for international engagement in post-conflict fragile states?

This article is intended to analyse two leading approaches that have guided international efforts to promote peace and development in conflict-afflicted fragile states since the 1990s, namely peace building and state building. In a relatively recent development a growing number of donors has sought to bring these two closer together, based upon the perception that the challenges posed by (post-)conflict fragile states need to be addressed through an approach that combines both—‘state-building for peace’, as the undp has put it. The article thus seeks to explore how the processes of building peace are related to the processes of building more resilient, effective and responsive states in (post-)conflict settings. It provides an overview of the evolution of these two concepts and analyses key complementarities between peace building and state building. It also explores the challenges that arise for both on the basis of these complementarities. The article goes on to examine some of the most significant tensions that arise between the two, and what these tensions may imply for the international assistance community. By way of a conclusion the article offers a few key lessons that emerge from the analysis for improved donor policy and practice in state building for peace efforts.     

Islamic Radicalism in East Africa: Is There a Cause for Concern?

The article explores the development of Islamic radicalism in East Africa by examining specific states. The author argues that the evidence suggests that although Islamic radicalism has not made substantial inroads into the region, it may still do so, as East Africa suffers from political repression as well as socioeconomic problems. The author concludes that the region must undergo significant changes to improve political representation and socioeconomic conditions.     

Mechanisation and cropping intensification: Economics of machinery use in low‐wage economies

Farm mechanisation in less developed countries was expected to increase output and cropping intensity by enabling greater ‘timeliness’ of crucial farm operations. However, empirical evidence shows no such effects. It is demonstrated that in low‐wage economies only a small number of machines can be economically viable in a given area; this number is generally inadequate to improve timeliness of operations.     

Urban bias in price risk: The geography of food price distributions in low‐income economies

The geography of agricultural marketing has important implications for the stochastic distribution of agricultural commodity prices. This article proposes that objective food price risk differs between rural and urban areas of infrastructure‐poor economies characterised by spatially concentrated patterns of foodgrains storage. This difference implies an urban bias having adverse welfare effects for peasants who seasonally switch between net food seller and net food buyer positions. Empirical analysis of rice price data from Madagascar suggests that price variability and skewness indeed differ between rural and urban areas in ways that adversely influence the relative welfare of rural peasants.