Legal Empowerment and Horizontal Inequalities after Conflict

Abstract

This article explores whether legal empowerment can address horizontal inequalities in post-conflict settings, and, if so, how. It argues that legal empowerment has modest potential to reduce these inequalities. Nevertheless, there are risks that legal empowerment might contribute to a strengthening of group identities, reduction of social cohesion, and, in the worst case, triggering of conflict. It looks at how two legal empowerment programmes in Liberia navigated the tensions between equity and peace.     

Can Business Rights Alleviate Group-Based Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa? Understanding the Limits to Reform

Abstract

Africa’s indigenous minorities face unique constraints, particularly in terms of engaging in even the most basic business activities. They typically lack business rights, but, even where such rights have been extended, they have had scant impact on group poverty. This paper argues that the failure of business rights to meaningfully transform the livelihoods of marginalised minority groups stems from elite capture of resources, dependency on external validation, and a contradiction between a collective problem (group poverty) and an individualist solution (business rights). African states could alter conditions through active pursuit of affirmative action policies, but lack socio-economic and political incentives.     

Democracy and Empowerment

The article argues that institutions of parliamentary democracy are currently being undermined and calls for the development of new means of democratic empowerment. The meaning of 'democratic empowerment' differs sharply depending on whether one refers to a predominantly aggregative, or a predominantly integrative strategy of empowerment. The article seeks to clarify the phrase. For a predominantly aggregative strategy of empowerment, as proposed by Paul Hirst, the primary means of empowerment is exist. For a predominantly integrative strategy of empowerment, proposed by David Burns, Robin Hambleton and Paul Hoggett the primary means of empowerment is voice. The article concludes that a democratic strategy of empowerment must aim to balance exit and voice options. An example of how balance could be institutionalized is found in Denmark.     

Legal Empowerment of the Poor through Property Rights Reform: Tensions and Trade-offs of Land Registration and Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Land registration and titling in Africa is often advocated as a pro-poor legal empowerment strategy. Advocates have put forth different visions of the substantive goals this is to achieve. Some see registration and titling as a way to protect smallholders’ rights of access to land. Others frame land registration as part of community-protection or ethno-justice agendas. Still others see legal empowerment in the market-enhancing commodification of property rights. This paper contrasts these different visions, showing that each entails tensions and trade-offs. The analysis helps explain why land law reforms aiming at legal empowerment may be controversial or divisive in African countries.     

Inequality and fertility

This article focuses on the relationship between inequality and fertility, with empirical analysis only of direct influences. Whereas much of the literature seems to be based on 0-order correlations, the present study uses multiple regression analysis to test the strength of the evidence for a relationship between inequality and fertility when competing hypotheses are also considered. In addition, this study attempts to clarify some of the issues surrounding the measurement of inequality and to show how these may affect empirical results. It appears from the results presented here that research into the relative status of women as an influence on fertility holds considerable promise. In particular, it is interesting that a measure of the relative status of women (ratio of female school enrollment to male school enrollment) that is highly correlated with absolute educational status of people in the nation in general, and even more highly correlated with absolute educational status of women, emerges as one of 3 important predictors of fertility. The other measure of the relative educational status of women (female school enrollment ratio minus male school enrollment ratio), which has lower correlations with absolute educational status both of women and people in general, does not appear important, although it should be an equally valid indicator of women's status. It also has lower correlations with total fertility rates. 1 focus of further research should be an attempt to disentangle the effects of the relative status of women from absolute status of women and absolute status of people in the nation as a whole. Less promising is the prospect of future work on the relationship between income inequaltiy and fertility. The results are unencouraging with respect to both sampling problems and the actual magnitude of the effect of inequality on fertility. Overall, it appears that the importance of income inequality as an influence on fertility may have been overstated in the past.     

A Structural Equation Model of Female Empowerment

This paper proposes a structural equation model to measure and explain female empowerment in Cambodia. Empowerment is defined as the decision-making ability of a woman regarding her strategic and non-strategic life choices. Grounded in the Capability Approach and in the gender economics literature this conceptualisation accounts for three key elements: resources, values/traditions, and decision-outcomes. These elements interact into a system of structural equations where a latent variable is specified to measure empowerment; decision-outcomes enter as partial metrics of empowerment; and resources, and values/traditions are modelled as exogenous factors. Stochastic dominance analysis is used to compare the empowerment status of women across life choices.     

Decentralisation,Economic Inequality and Insurgency

This paper investigates if devolution of political power in conflict-affected areas can reduce violence. Political decentralisation has been widely recognised to improve access to local public services. By providing institutional means to address local grievances, its role in diffusing social tensions has also been suggested. However, there is lack of systematic evidence on the role of local self-government in mitigating social-unrest arising due to local socio-economic issues. Our paper addresses this gap in the literature by assessing the impact of a local government institution, introduced in the Adivasi districts in 1996, on Maoist insurgency in India. The local councils aimed at addressing Adivasi grievances by recognising their traditional lifestyle and land, forests, and water rights, thereby reducing their incentive to participate in insurgency. However, empirical analysis performed using difference-in-difference methodology suggests that Maoist insurgency, as reported in Global Terrorism Database, increased post-decentralisation. We make sure this result is robust to various alternative explanations including state-level policy changes and political environment. Drawing on extensive empirical tests as well as existing qualitative studies, we show that an unequal local power structure and weak state-capacity in implementing the decentralisation programme resulted in local elites appropriating its benefits. This increased Adivasis grievances and consequently insurgency.     

Preferences,Spatial Prices and Inequality

This study examines the effect of prices on inequality in rural India during the period of economic reforms and beyond (1999/2000–2009/2010). It proposes a framework for calculating ‘exact’ price indices, based on the ‘Exact Affine Stone Index’ (EASI) demand system, and shows its usefulness by calculating spatial prices and regionally varying temporal prices that allow for both differences in preferences between states and over time. The study finds that the nature of inflation has been regressive during (1999/2000–2004/2005) and progressive during (2004/2005–2009/2010) and that the effects of temporal price inflation and spatial prices on inequality are qualitatively different.     

Inequality,Economic Development,and Democratization

Although multiple theories suggest that economic development and inequality somehow affect democratization, these claims have received only limited empirical support. I contend that much of the confusion stems from the implicit assumption held by the literature that development and inequality affect democratization independently of one another. In this paper, I argue that the effect of income distribution on democratization is in fact contingent on the income level: in middle-income countries inequality fosters democratization; in rich countries, however, it harms democratization. Using a data set covering almost all autocracies between 1960 and 2007, I find evidence consistent with my hypothesis.     

The Institutional Foundations of Inequality and Growth

After a decade of research, the effect of inequality on long-run economic growth remains unresolved, in part because researchers have treated omitted variable bias as an estimation problem rather than a deeper question of causality. In this article we argue that the key omitted variable is the quality of economic institutions. Using both cross-country and panel data specifications, we find no direct effect of inequality on growth in the long-run. Rather, the protection of property rights simultaneously raises growth rates and reduces income inequality. We interpret these findings as evidence that insecure property rights disproportionately disadvantage the poor.     

Global Inequality in Well-being Dimensions

This paper contributes to the literature on global inequality in multidimensional well-being by examining inter-country disparities in the longevity, knowledge and standard of material living components of the well-known and widely-used Human Development Index for the years 1992–2004. It differs from previous studies by examining global inequality in each of the components of this index alongside that of the index as a whole, thus side-stepping ambiguities over weighting that are inherent to multidimensional well-being indices. The Gini coefficient, both population and non-population weighted, is used to measure the extent of inequality. Results indicate that the different components often provide very different information to the index as a whole, especially with respect to changes in global inequality over time. Most component variables show declines in global inequality, whereas the longevity component exhibits increased inequality since 1992.     

Negotiating Refugee Empowerment(s) in Resettlement Organizations

In-depth interviews with both organizational staff and refugee clients in two American refugee resettlement organizations explore how empowerment is communicated to and understood by refugees being “empowered.” This study found that while organizational staff professed empowerment focused on self-sufficiency as self-determination, in practice their communication to clients defined self-sufficiency a priori in economic terms. Refugee clients instead constructed empowerment(s) in economic, educational, personal, and family terms. These findings highlight the need for changes in U.S. resettlement policy and for theoretical and practical understandings of refugee empowerment to recognize polysemic and conflicting empowerments in different life arenas and from different positionalities.     

The Donor Problem: An Experimental Analysis of Beneficiary Empowerment

Donors often rely on local intermediaries to deliver benefits to target beneficiaries. Each selected recipient observes if the intermediary under-delivers to them, so they serve as natural monitors. These recipients may, however, withhold complaints to ‘thank’ the intermediary for selecting them. Furthermore, the intermediary may distort selection (for example, by picking richer recipients who feel less entitled) to reduce complaints. We design an experimental game representing the donor's problem. We compare two institutions. In one treatment the intermediary selects recipients. In the other selection is random – as by an uninformed donor. In our data random selection dominates delegation of the selection task to the intermediary. Selection distortions are similar but intermediaries divert more when they have selection power (correctly anticipating that gratitude for selection will reduce complaints). Our results identify a problem in combining selection and delivery tasks. The insights are also applicable to social funds, decentralisation and participatory projects.     

Trade Policy,Inequality and Performance in Indian Manufacturing

Many Congolese seem to have withstood their country’s protracted economic crisis relatively well, despite its length and severity. This study analyses whether and to what extent this livelihood paradox can be explained by a strategy of asset depletion. In general, this strategy seems not to have played an important role. Marked reductions in household asset stock were limited to some secondary urban centres. Explanations for this strategy’s limited reach point to a much richer set of asset coping mechanisms which households may have developed regarding assets in times of hardship, and to a concomitant shortage of research strategies to take due account of these.     

Identity Documents,Welfare Enhancement,and Group Empowerment in the Global South

Abstract

Having a birth certificate is a stepping stone to acquiring an array of rights and benefits, including other documents necessary to navigate in and outside of one’s home country. Despite a birth certificate’s importance, many children in the developing world never obtain one. Whether a person does so or not often depends on ethnicity, race, gender, and age. With the rights of individuals as well as groups in mind, this article examines some of the crucial causes and consequences of not acquiring this key document. It concludes that legal empowerment matters. It also underscores what governments can do, if political will exists, to facilitate the process of birth registration and certification among citizens.     

Inequality and Political Clientelism: Evidence from South India

Political parties can be vehicles for economic and social development in poor countries. They can also serve as rent seeking instruments. Uncovering how parties function is therefore key to establishing the preconditions for good governance. The article discusses when and why clientelism on the basis of party affiliation may arise. Operationally, party-based clientelism is defined as a bias of public policy in favour of members of the governing political party. In a sample of local governments in India, party-based clientelism is shown to exist in two out of four states and to be strongly affected by economic inequality.     

Inequality and Support for Political Engagement in New Democracies

Existing studies of income inequality and political participation—including related literature, for example, on preferences for redistribution—leave us with the question of whether citizens see political democracy as offering ways to challenge market inequalities. Using original surveys in 13 Central and Eastern European countries, I find that those who see high and undesirable levels of income inequality have stronger demands for popular democratic participation than those who do not. In addition, neither the aggregate levels of support for political engagement nor individuals’ perceptions of inequality are coordinated with either national-level indicators of income inequality or democratic performance.