How does trade openness influence budget deficits in developing countries?

Abstract

This paper analyses the effects of trade openness on budget balances by distinguishing the effects of natural openness from those of trade policy. Revealed indicators of natural openness and trade policy are computed. Using GMM-system estimator, the econometric analysis focuses on 66 developing countries over 1974–98. The results show that trade openness increases a country's exposure to external shocks. This enforces the negative impact on budget balances of terms of trade instability. Additionally, trade openness influences budget balances through several other channels: corruption, income inequalities, etc. Then natural openness and trade policy have opposite effects: the former deteriorates budget balances whereas the latter enhances them.     

Instability and Oil: How Political Time Horizons Affect Oil Revenue Management

While economic explanations for the “resource curse” are well established, the political factors explaining why governments fail to take corrective action remain poorly understood. Research demonstrates that if governments save oil profits abroad and slowly re-introduce the oil-generated revenue into the domestic economy once the rate of return on investment is greater at home than abroad and the quality of project implementation developed, many of the economic problems that plague oil-rich countries can be avoided. Political time horizons shape the incentives of governments to pursue this strategy. Unstable leaders rely on oil revenue to maintain positions of power. They also have less incentive to save oil windfalls abroad as they fear they will not be in office long enough to benefit from such decisions. This paper uses both quantitative data and case study analysis of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to demonstrate that leaders with longer time horizons save a greater proportion of oil windfalls abroad than their less stable counterparts, helping avoid the economic pitfalls of oil abundance.     

Divergence in India: Income differentials at the state level, 1970–97

Abstract

We examine India's regional disparities in economic performance between 1970–97. Our preliminary analysis shows that, in absolute terms, initially poorer states grew at slower rates than initially wealthier ones and that there is also evidence of increasing dispersion of income levels across the states. Our econometric analysis investigates the possibility of club convergence and conditional convergence. Although we do not find evidence of the former, we can suggest some of the factors associated in the latter. Our research also indicates that the onset of economic policy reform in 1991 significantly intensified growth differentials between the states.     

The Resource Curse - What Have We Learned from Two Decades of Intensive Research: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in the so-called ‘resource curse’, that is the tendency of resource-rich countries to underperform in several development outcomes. This has generated a mountain of (often contradictory) evidence leaving many floundering in the flood of information. This special issue compiles eight papers from some of the most prominent contributors to this literature, combining original research with critical reflection on the current stock of knowledge. The studies collectively emphasise the complexities and conditionalities of the ‘curse’ – its presence/intensity is largely context-specific, depending on the type of resources, socio-political institutions and linkages with the rest of the economy.     

Factor markets and resource allocation in colonial Punjab

It is often argued that agricultural factor markets in colonial India were underdeveloped, leading to inefficient resource use and slow agricultural development. However, there is little econometric evidence on these issues. This article outlines a model which incorporates the factor market imperfections discussed in the literature and tests the model against data from the Punjab. There is, in the statistical sense, evidence of resource misallocation; however, these effects are too small to be of much economic significance.     

Assessing Local Government Revenue Forecasting Techniques

Abstract

This article assesses revenue forecasting techniques that could be used by local governments. This study is most interested in discerning the extent of use of the causal techniques of deterministic and econometric forecasting. The data used in this study was compiled from an International City/County Managers Association (ICMA) survey of revenue forecasting techniques used by US local governments. The results indicate limited use of causal revenue forecasting of deterministic and econometric methods compared to expert and trend forecasting techniques. This finding could possibly be attributed to the lack of exposure to more advanced causal forecasting techniques that budget officers receive in US public administration programs.     

Civil society and spaces for natural resource governance in Kenya

Abstract

In the Kenyan context of new resource discoveries and an ambitious devolution programme, and what is argued to be a shrinking of civic space globally, the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) working on natural resource governance is critical. The resilience, space and capacity of civil society to engage in the policy process, from community-based organisations to national non-governmental organisations, all shape outcomes in terms of legislation, policy and management of scarce resources. Drawing on interviews with CSOs from across Kenya, following the new 2010 constitution and devolution programme, this article explores how new negotiated spaces of participation around resource governance have emerged in Kenya. Using multidimensional frameworks to analyse power relations, it explores how Kenyan CSOs are cautiously redefining roles, offering expertise when devolved governments struggle, and standing up to powerful interests of corporate lobbies with varying degrees of success.     

The Gender Gap in African Political Participation: Testing Theories of Individual and Contextual Determinants

Abstract

This article aims to test whether existing theories of what factors underlie the gender gap in political participation apply in an African context. Empirical estimations drawing on recent data covering over 27,000 respondents across 20 African emerging democracies suggest that whereas several of the investigated factors – structural differences in individual resource endowments and employment, and cultural differences based in religious affiliations – are found to be important determinants of participation, they explain only a very modest share of the observed gender gaps. Suggestive evidence instead points to the role of clientelism, restricted civil liberties, economic development and gender norms.     

Why wait for the state? Using the CFS Tenure Guidelines to recalibrate political-legal struggles for democratic land control

Abstract

In 2012, with the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (or TGs), the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) established a new international standard on natural resource governance. After adoption, the challenge is for these guidelines to be implemented and used. However, no law is self-interpreting or self-implementing, and so how states will interpret and implement these new guidelines cannot be taken for granted. This is especially true in the current global context of land grabbing driven, in many cases, by alliances of state and capital. Consequently, subaltern people, for whom rights in relation to the natural resources on which they depend remain out of reach, face the challenge and potential opportunity of making use of the TGs to recalibrate the political-legal terrain in favour of human rights and democratic control of land and other natural resources.     

The ‘tenure guidelines’ as a tool for democratising land and resource control in Latin America

Abstract

The current configuration of global land politics – who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North – brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the ‘political moment’ marked by the increasing intersection of issues and state and social forces that mobilise around these. This paper looks at whether and how the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (also known as the TGs) passed in 2012 in the United Nations Committee for Food Security (CFS) can contribute to democratising resource politics today. This work puts forward some initial ideas about how systematic research into the TGs can be done more meaningfully.     

Conflict,Development and Security at the Agro–Pastoral–Wildlife Nexus: A Case of Laikipia County,Kenya

Abstract

This article analyses the connections between conflict and development at the agriculture–pastoralism–wildlife interface from the perspective of human security. The article draws on empirical data (qualitative and quantitative) generated in Laikipia County, Kenya, and literature to illustrate that (1) the major issues which cut across each of these conflicts are related to natural resource management, cultural practices and governance, and (2) these cross-cutting issues impinge on people’s freedoms, extending these conflicts into cases of human insecurity. Specifically, each conflict type compounds the impacts of the others on farmer and pastoral economic, food, environmental, personal, community, health and political security.     

Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections*

Despite United Russia’s (Edinaya Rossiya—UR) dominance in repeated Russian legislative elections, the correlates of the party’s electoral support remain noticeably understudied beyond the influence of electoral manipulation. I pinpoint the specific contours of UR’s strongholds in the two most recent parliamentary elections in Russia—2007 and 2011—focusing on raion- and regional-level correlates of the vote using an original dataset. UR has been undergirded by geographically concentrated ethnic minorities and the countryside, and these patterns of support have persisted even in the absence of fraud, suggesting that the dominant party’s electoral windfalls cannot be attributed solely to electoral malfeasance.     

GRASSROOTS MOBILIZATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to characterize activities of an Albuquerque based organization called the SouthWest Organizing Project. Aligning with other people of color, Chicanos in the Southwest connect to a national and international movement for environmental and economic justice to tackle the negative impacts of global restructuring. This paper presents issues and strategies regarding the expansion of Intel Corporation, the poisoning in high tech employment, anti-NAFTA position, inadequate infrastructure, and the placement of a courthouse in a long-standing community. Armed with knowledge, oppositional consciousness, principled strategies, and a politics of engagement, environmental justice activists are inserting themselves into questions of international economic integration, local economic development, neighborhood change including issues of gentrification, infrastructure, tax abatements, natural resource management, zoing, and an array of development issues.     

Conflict diamonds and the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002)

Abstract

In the early 1990s several rebel groups turned to natural resource extraction to pay for war. A key form of this is rebel diamond production, commonly referred to as conflict diamonds, which is widely perceived as being highly beneficial to insurgent organisations. Yet in the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002), the use of conflict diamonds by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) resulted in a decisive insurgent defeat. How can this outcome be explained? Offering a nuanced understanding of how conflict diamonds affect civil war, this article shows that although diamonds generated considerable revenue for UNITA, they were not an effective method for them to take on the Angolan government. This was for two reasons: internally, the rebels greatly struggled to convert their diamond proceeds into sufficient goods and services; and externally, it left the group highly vulnerable to international countermeasures in the form of United Nations Security Council sanctions. Natural resource extraction may therefore not be as useful to rebel groups as is frequently believed.     

The Anthropology of Extraction: Critical Perspectives on the Resource Curse

Abstract

Attempts to address the resource curse remain focussed on revenue management, seeking technical solutions to political problems over examinations of relations of power. In this paper, we provide a review of the contribution anthropological research has made over the past decade to understanding the dynamic interplay of social relations, economic interests and struggles over power at stake in the political economy of extraction. In doing so, we show how the constellation of subaltern and elite agency at work within processes of resource extraction is vital in order to confront the complexities, incompatibilities, and inequities in the exploitation of mineral resources.     

Leadership Climate in the Public Sector: Feelings Matter Too!

Abstract

Although there is substantial empirical evidence supporting the important role of leadership in organizational contexts, there is limited empirical evidence that focuses on the distinction between how employees feel about senior leaders and what they think about senior leaders. This is particularly true in the public-sector environment. In this paper, a model is tested that identifies key consequences of affectively and cognitively based perceptions of public-sector senior leadership. Data collected from a large public-sector organization were examined to identify the correlates of affectively and cognitively weighted perceptions of leadership. A series of regression analyses was conducted to identify more clearly the extent to which affectively and cognitively based perceptions of leadership influenced affective commitment, attitudes to change, intention to turnover, and extra-role performance. The results suggest that both affectively and cognitively based perceptions of leadership influenced organizational commitment and cynicism toward change. Extra-role behavior was influenced by the affective dimension alone, and intention to turnover was influenced by the cognitive dimension alone. The results also showed a significant interaction between the affective and cognitive dimensions in predicting intention to turnover. In general terms, the findings will prove helpful to human resource practitioners interested in diagnosing and managing the transformational leadership climate in public-sector organizations.     

Cross-scalar Dynamics of the Resource Curse: Constraints on Local Participation in the Bolivian Gas Sector

Abstract

Contributing to debate on the contextual underpinnings and varieties of the resource curse, this article points to how political and economic dynamics of resource endowments operate in interrelated but potentially contradictory ways across spatial scales. Resource endowments insert a complex set of incentives and interests into the political arena in ways that both enable and constrain actors at different scales. Using a case study of gas governance in Bolivia, the article illustrates the interrelation of these dynamics across local, national and international scales, and in particular how they circumscribe the space for local participation.     

The Institutional and Psychological Foundations of Natural Resource Policies

Abstract

The pressures of political interests which drive the resource curse are well-understood. But ordinary citizens are usually cast both as the innocent victims of this process, and as the potential solution if only governments could be made more accountable to them. This paper draws upon recent developments in social psychology to discuss the formation of mass opinions on two aspects of resource ownership. One is the spatial assignment of ownership between local and national claims, which has been a significant cause of conflict. The other is the assignment of revenues between current consumption and future investment, which has usually been excessively biased towards the former. I suggest why, in the absence of an active government communications policy to offset them, known psychological biases may interact with resource discoveries to generate mass opinions which contribute to these problems.     

Corruption and Popular Support for Democracy and Government in Transitional Contexts: The Case of Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Many studies have argued that corruption undermines perceived democratic legitimacy, trust in state institutions, and government support. However, few prior studies have included transitional or hybrid regimes in their analyses, or simultaneously examined multiple aspects of this relationship. Using focus groups and a nationally representative survey conducted throughout a tumultuous transitional period in Kyrgyzstan, we find evidence for our hypotheses that citizens with greater corruption concerns will be more pro-democratic when evaluating democracy or its institutional components in the abstract; yet, they distrust existing government institutions. Even in a hybrid regime lacking democratic experience, citizens exhibit attributes of distrusting democrats.