Russia's external debt: infinite rescheduling?

Since Russia defaulted on her sovereign domestic debt in the aftermath of the August 1998 crisis, questions were raised as to whether she would do the same for her huge external liabilities. Creditors worry about the possibility that Moscow will try to confront them either with a unilateral moratorium or will try to achieve an “infinite” debt restructuring. The latter would eventually mean the same since the original claims would not be serviced, but kept on the books whereas written off claims get erased. Given the economic resources of that country such a solution cannot be recommended despite some voices that Russia needs even more aid. To relieve the debt service burden the West should, however, agree to reschedule the payments.     

The structure of employment and structural adjustment in the Philippines

Growth in the 1970s seemed, at that time, to have brought the Philippines to a rather high equilibrium growth path. But the foreign debt and political crisis in the early and mid‐1980s had brought the economy down to a lower equilibrium path. The recovery years (1987 to 1990) did not prove to be sustainable, given the extreme debt overhang, so that the economy retreated once again to the lower equilibrium path in the early 1990s. Significant debt reduction schemes and the new inflows (remittances of overseas workers and rising foreign investments) allowed a new growth trend. Whether sufficient growth can be maintained in the medium and long term will depend to a large part on uncontrollable external conditions. Significant improvements in trade and industrial policies are needed so that external deficits and imports will finance those sectors that allow for creation of high quality employment. Policy will have to shift resources away from the trade, real estate and other service sectors to strong tradeable manufactures. If the Philippines cannot get out of the boom—bust cycle, labour productivity in the medium and long term will stagnate and the share of those employed in the total labour force will remain stable, leading to stagnating employment opportunities and worsening income distribution.     

Inflation targeting at the crossroads: Evidence from post-communist economies during the crisis

The objective of this paper is to assess if inflation targeting post-communist economies performed better, in terms of output growth, during the crisis than their non-inflation targeting counterparts. The paper also puts the issue in the context of the preconditions of inflation targeters to adopt this regime. 26 post-communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States are analyzed during the ongoing economic crisis. Results suggest that inflation targeters of those countries performed worse than non-inflation targeters. The growth decline in inflation targeters post-communist economies has been estimated to be deeper by about four percentage points than that in non-inflation targeters. The study finds very limited role of the preconditions for growth decline. Only the lower amount of monetary financing of the budget may have contributed in inflation-targeting countries to have gone through the crisis better.     

LEADING REFORM AMIDST TRANSBOUNDARY CRISES: LESSONS FROM GREECE

Applying a leadership–task perspective within the context of the Greek sovereign debt crisis (2009–12), the study finds that the imperatives of short‐term crisis management conflict with the ability of Greek leaders to effectively implement long‐term reforms. Electoral gains, crisis duration, centralized decision‐making, and the degree of external actor involvement explain the choice between credible response and effective recovery. Despite beneficial effects, the activation of external stakeholders ultimately weakens the impetus for reform. The study has implications for political leadership and EU crisis management.     

Recasting the Power Politics of Debt: structural power,hegemonic stabilisers and change

The 2007–08 financial crisis exposed and exacerbated the debt pathologies of the West. This paper examines whether the new global debt relations that have been generated by this crisis have transformed global power politics, changing the way in which the global South and the global North interrelate and interact. To do so the paper analyses the G20 advanced and emerging economies, examining a number of key indicators related to debt, indebtedness and financial leverage. This research leads to two main findings. First, the crisis has indeed given rise to new global debt relations. As a result, any reforms in the post-crisis global political economy will take place in an environment that favours the rising powers. Second, the USA maintains its capacity to control the parameters of this new global debt politics and economics, but cannot directly impose the terms of a solution to the existing ‘global/hegemonic imbalances’ on the rising powers.     

Debt,Uneven Development and Capitalist Crisis in South Africa: from Moody’s macroeconomic monitoring to Marikana microfinance mashonisas

The power, vulnerability and destructiveness of financial markets are out of control in South Africa, now among the most unequal, economically volatile and protest-intensive countries worldwide. While debt made itself felt in many sites, of interest in both criticising and promoting solutions is the ‘scale jumping’ required from South Africa’s national insertion into the world financial system, entailing the Reserve Bank setting very high interest rates, in turn leading to unpayable levels of consumer debt, and at a time when microfinance is suddenly discredited as a development strategy. Macro- and micro-financial problems fused in the course of the Marikana Massacre of August 2012, reflecting the local and global powers of the Moody’s rating agency and ‘mashonisa’ loan sharks. The over-indebted Marikana mineworkers, who led a strike which catalysed many wildcat strikes elsewhere, confronted the local crisis by displacing it into the national economy. This only heightened the contradictions that Moody’s punished with its September 2012 credit-rating downgrade. Without a genuine ‘debt relief’ solution at both scales, society will continue to unravel, as financialisation reaches its limits within one of the world’s most extreme cases of uneven and combined development.     

Hungary's punitive turn: The shift from welfare to workfare

The Hungarian post-communist welfare state was created under the neoliberal influence of international organisations while retaining lots of elements of solidarity. The growing social tensions in the mid-2000s due to a second economic crisis in the new millennium led first the left then the right wing governments to shift the post-communist welfare state into a punitive type of workfare system. The article concludes that the political populism of the mid-2000s leading to an undemocratic governance by the 2010s better explains this paradigm shift than – as many authors argue - the neoliberal influence frame.     

Japanese aid to Africa: Patterns,motivation and the role of structural adjustment

This article presents estimates of capital flight from 25 low-income sub-Saharan African countries in the period 1970 to 1996. Capital flight totaled more than $193 billion (in 1996 dollars); with imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of flight capital amounts to $285 billion. The combined external debt of these countries stood at $178 billion in 1996. Taking capital flight as a measure of private external assets, and calculating net external assets as private external assets minus public external debts, sub-Saharan Africa thus appears to be a net creditor vis-à-vis the rest of the world.     

The new face of developing country debt

Developing country debt has been a major preoccupation for development policy makers and practitioners since the debt crisis of 1982. It is a major obstacle to economic and social progress in developing countries. After the resolution of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the debt relief initiatives for low-income countries of 1997–2006 concerns about developing country debt seem to have receded. However, there are a growing number of problems that warrant concern, including the accumulation of domestic debt, short-term debt and private non-guaranteed debt, and increasing recourse by low-income countries to international capital markets. At the same time developing countries have strengthened their capacity to oversee and analyse their debt portfolios. Nonetheless, significant weaknesses remain in debt management capacity at the national level. Moreover, the activities of ‘vulture funds’ and the lack of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism reveal major shortcomings in the international institutional architecture that need to be addressed urgently.     

Crime, organised crime and corruption in post-communist Europe and the CIS

This article examines the incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence on the crime, organised crime and corruption situations in post-communist states, and then seeks to explain the apparent increase in all three in early post-communism. Among the factors considered are the impact of weak states and economies, neo-liberalism, globalisation, Schengen and Fortress Europe, the Communist legacy (the ‘ghost from the past’), and collusion. The article then examines the dynamics of criminality and malfeasance in the region, and provides evidence to suggest that the crime and corruption situation has stabilised or even improved in most post-communist countries in recent times. The factors considered for explaining this apparent improvement are the role of external agents (notably the EU), the move from transition to consolidation, and the role of political will.     

Political Economy of Modern Belarus: Going Against Mainstream?

A peculiar model of post-communist political economy has evolved in Belarus under President Aliaksandr Lukashenka. It features prioritisation of non-entrepreneurial social groups, a strong role for the state, and extensive social security provision. The model appears to be grounded on Lukashenka's understanding of his political powerbase; having no external backing for his policies, he wants to command as wide grass-roots support as possible to remain in office. By doing so, he rejects the principles of pluralist democracy and market economy, making Belarus's political economy model quite different from that envisaged in the mainstream post-communist theories of neo-liberalism and gradualism.     

Tradeable emission permits and the control of greenhouse gases

This article reiterates the case for tradeable permits as a global policy option for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and considers the detailed design of a global tradeable‐permit regime, emphasising the importance of the initial assignment of property rights, and arguing that the relevant property rights in this case are the rights of every member of the world community to share in a sustainable global atmosphere and climate. The allocation of permits should therefore be done on a per capita basis across the world community, with the result that rents generated by the process of reducing carbon emissions would accrue to non‐polluters, most of whom live in the ‘South’. The international transfers of income and wealth implied by the proposed scheme are large but feasible. There is therefore a real prospect that an international convention on carbon dioxide emissions could end the debt crisis and finance sustainable development in the South..     

Third World studies,development studies and post-communist studies: Definitions,distance and dynamism

The collapse of state socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s has had contrary impacts on Third World studies and development studies. On the one hand, the disintegration of the former Soviet bloc has made the spirit of 'non-alignment' of the Third World no longer relevant. On the other hand, the nature of post-communist transformation has led many scholars to study transition in terms of development. This article will examine the recent trend of decline in Third World studies and the penetration of development studies into post-communist studies. It will argue that the employment of development perspectives in transitology will widen our field of vision of post-communist transformation.     

Varieties of capitalism and the Estonian economy: Institutions,growth and crisis in a liberal market economy

This article examines Estonia's economic institutions, performance and vulnerability to the global economic crisis in the context of the varieties of capitalism framework. It shows that Estonia shares many characteristics of a liberal market economy, but that there are also some features which do not fit the classical model, notably its corporate governance institutions. It also suggests that the varieties of capitalism framework can account for key features of Estonia's economic performance, including its growth trajectory and adjustment to the global financial crisis. The article also reflects on the broader significance of these findings for understanding post-communist capitalism.     

国际政治研究与中国的粮食安全(代序)

一、粮食供应稳定：中国的敏感 像诸多国际政治研究中的非传统安全课题一样,粮食安全是审视中国与外部世界的关联及互动的重要课题。2007-2008年间,全球出现了又一轮粮食危机。其显著表征是国际市场的玉米、大米和小麦的平均价格翻了两番甚至三番。由于在谷物品种中,玉米、大米和小麦与满足人类的日常营养需求的相关度更高,所以,其价格超常规波动对一些高度依赖进口的国家造成了冲击,     

Corruption,Privatisation and Economic Growth in Post-communist Countries

Abstract

This article empirically investigates the effects of corruption and privatisation on economic growth in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. We use a corruption and privatisation augmented open-economy leader–follower endogenous growth model to derive our research hypotheses. In this setting, corruption, privatisation and external openness jointly determine the per capita income in the follower economy. This model predicts that economies with higher shares of private ownership, lower corruption, and higher external openness enjoy higher rates of growth. Our empirical verification of these predictions is based on a panel of 29 post-communist countries during the period 1996–2014. Our estimation results confirm the negative effects of corruption, while the positive effects of privatisation are limited to small-scale privatisation.     

Import substitution and structural change in Indian manufacturing industry 1950–1966

The paper links a simple aggregate model of growth‐cum‐external debt with an empirical formula for debt‐servicing capacity. Through simulations of growth and debt patterns, using data related to two groups of LDCs, the underlying conditions and the pattern of debt service problems which emerge are studied. Simulation of policies designed to alleviate debt‐service problems allows an assessment of the efficiency and suitability of different policies. The time dimension of debt problems and its relevance to policy are considered as well. The study raises doubts regarding the applicability of accepted beliefs and rules of thumb related to external debt management.     

Social contracts and authoritarian projects in post-Soviet space: The use of administrative resource

Drawing on evidence from Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, this article analyses the use of a tool of political coercion known in the post-communist world as adminresurs, or administrative resource. Administrative resource is characterized by the pre-election capture of bureaucratic hierarchies by an incumbent regime in order to secure electoral success at the margins. In contrast to other forms of political corruption, administrative resource fundamentally rewrites existing social contracts. It redefines access to settled entitlements—public infrastructure, social services, and labor compensation—as rewards for political support. It is thus explicitly negative for publics, who stand to lose access to existing entitlements if they do not support incumbents. The geography of its success in post-communist states suggests that this tool of authoritarian capacity building could be deployed anywhere two conditions are present: where there are economically vulnerable populations, and where economic and political spheres of life overlap.     

国际经济体系与地缘政治:金融危机及其影响

Global financial crisis is ongoing. The crisis has not only impacted the mode of the world economy that further called for reform of international economic system, but also exerted far-reaching impact on the transformation of the international political system and geopolitics. China, undergoing a critical period of reform anddevelopment, is obliged to probe the essence of the crisis and its prospective impacts, to discern the direction of the transforming international political system and geopolitics, and ...