When States Implode: The Correlates of Africa’s civil wars, 1950–92

This article provides a systematic analysis of the extent to which political, economic, and cultural factors are associated with civil wars in sub-Saharan African states. Drawing on a theoretical argument that associates the likelihood of civil war with the tumult that arises from the simultaneous challenges of state building and nation building, several testable propositions are derived on the correlates of African civil wars. Results of logistic regression analyses indicate that previous colonial experience is a significant predictor to the likelihood of civil wars. It is also found that economic development reduces the probability of civil war while militarization increases it. Regime type played no significant role in African civil wars. Similarly, no support was found for the thesis that cultural factors are significantly associated with African civil war, which belies the notion that African civil wars are simply “ethnic conflicts.” It appears that politico-economic factors—instead of cultural ones—give rise to civil wars in Africa. Errol A. Henderson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science, Wayne State University. He has published articles on international war, foreign policy, domestic conflict, and international political economy inInternational Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, Peace & Change, andWorld Affairs.     

Modelling peruvian debt rescheduling in the 1980s

International debt rescheduling has continued to be a crucial issue in the international political economy. This article develops a political-economic model to examine debt rescheduling between private banks and debtors. The model provides a means of developing bargaining games by allowing the analyst to deduce game payoffs based on actors' “individual situations” as defined by their overall capabilities, their debt-specific resources, and their coalitional stability. Based on these games, it predicts the likely bargaining outcomes in terms of the degree to which banks will make lending concessions and the degree to which debtors will agree to adjust their economies. The model is operationalized based on written sources and interviews and then applied to four periods of rescheduling between the banks and Peru from 1982 to 1990. It proves successful in predicting bargaining outcomes in these cases, and we argue that it should prove helpful in investigating other debt bargaining episodes. Vinod K. Aggarwal is associate professor of political science and affiliated professor in the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author ofLiberal Protectionism: The International Politics of Organized Textile Trade (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press),International Debt Threat (Berkeley: Institute for International Studies), and articles on the politics of trade and finance. His forthcoming book is entitledDebt Games: Strategic Interaction in International Debt Rescheduling Maxwell A. Cameron is assistant professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. He is the author ofDemocracy and Authoritarianism in Peru: Political Coalitions and Social Change (New York: St. Martin's Press, forthcoming), as well as a number of articles on Peruvian politics. He recently coeditedThe Political Economy of North American Free Trade (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993) with Ricardo Grinspun.     

Determinants of developing country debt: the revolving door of debt rescheduling through the Paris Club and export credits

Programmes designed to alleviate developing country debt have been implemented by bilateral, commercial and multilateral creditors and sovereign debt has been restructured under Paris Club negotiations. These strategies have not been very successful at reducing the debt levels of developing countries, in part because they continue to receive export credit insurance facilities through export credit agencies (ecas). The purpose of this paper is to examine the high percentages of developing country debt owed to governmental ecas. Analysis of the external debt of low-income and lower middle-income economies at five year intervals from 1980 to 2010 finds a substantial part of the indebtedness of these economies is held by ecas. Analysis of specific sub-Saharan African countries undergoing debt rescheduling and forgiveness through Paris Club negotiations was done for Ghana and Kenya. These results show that, following debt restructuring, new export credit guarantees and/or loans were forthcoming to these countries from the ecas of the creditor countries that rescheduled their old debt in Paris Club negotiations during 2000–12.     

The developmental state: Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan compared

The growth performances of the Israeli economy during the years 1948–1973 were excellent by any criteria, and are comparable to the “miraculous” performances of South Korea and Taiwan. Excellent economic performances in the three countries were accompanied by the presence of an autonomous and an interventionist state as well as by strategies of governed development (in the spheres of finance, investment, and international trade). The comparison is used, to shed new light on the Israeli political economy as well as on the replicability of the developmental state model across regions, cultures, and political regimes. First, by comparing the three countries and pointing to the similarities in the role and autonomy of the state, the article offers a different interpretation of the Israeli economy from that offered by both neoclassical and neomarxist interpretations of the Israeli political economy. Second, successful cases of develoment are rare in our world; this should make the study of the Israeli political economy a valuable case-study for the proponents of the developmental state model. By pointing out the similarities in the growth performances and the developmental strategies of Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea, as well as the dissimilarities in their political regimes, their cultural traditions, and their regional settings, this article further strengthens the arguments in favor of state-guided economic development in developing countries. David Levi-Faur is a lecturer of comparative public policy and business and politics at the University of Haifa. He was a visiting scholar at the L.S.E., University of California, Berkeley, the University of Utrecht, and the University of Amsterdam.     

Civil society and democracy in the third world: Ambiguities and historical possibilities

The terminology of “civil society” has gained currency in recent discussions of democratic movements around the globe. Although less grandiose in its implications than claims about the “end of history,” this terminology does suggest a certain universality in human experience. We argue that this claim of universality is warranted, but also problematic. We establish the relevance of our argument in reference to the literatures in African and Indian studies. We note first that the common employments of the concept ignore the theoretical and historical specificity of civil society: civil society is used to label any group or movement opposed to the state, regardless of its intent or character, or used so generically that it is indistinguishable from the term “society.” Instead, we argue that civil society is a sphere of social life, involving a stabilization of a system of rights, constituting human beings as individuals, both as citizens in relation to the state and as legal persons in the economy and the sphere of private association. Thus, we link the wide resonance of the concept to its embeddedness in the logic of liberal capitalist society and the capitalist global division of labor. This conception allows us to see that, although the emergence of a sphere of civil society involves at least minimal democranization and is supportive of struggles for further democratization, the status of democracy is also made quite problematic by the tensions endemic to liberal capitalism and the processes of uneven development within international capitalism. Our usage also allows us to distinguish more clearly movements dedicated to the construction of civil society from those that may count actually as counter-civil society movements. David L. Blaney received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is on leave from Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana as a visiting scholar for the 1993–94 academic year at The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052. His main research interests include international political economy, culture and international relations theory, and democratic theory. Mustapha Kamal Pasha received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C. 20016. His main research interests include international political economy, with particular regard to the Third World, and South Asian politics.     

Mexico and Argentina: Economic reform and technocratic decision making

This article examines the Mexican and Argentine cases of market reform and argues that despite important differences in regime type and in recent economic and political trajectories, the decision-making process in the two countries came to display important common features. In both cases, economic crises and debt negotiations played key roles in propelling technocratic reformers into positions of policy predominance; both exhibited exclusionary technocratic decision-making styles in which small technocratic elites insulated themselves from both extra and intra state pressures. While policy isolation was no doubt necessary for the successful implementation of market reforms, this style may be counter-productive to political stability over the long term. Judith Teichman is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her articles have appeared in such journals asLatin American Research Review, Latin American Perspectives, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, andThe Canadian Journal of Political Science and in edited volumes. She is the author ofPolicymaking in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis andPrivatization and Political Change in Mexico and is currently carrying out a comparative study of the structural adjustment policy process in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.     

Trade and development policies in Colombia: Export promotion and outward orientation, 1967–1992

As developing democracies implement programs of economic adjustment and trade liberalization, we need to examine the relationship between the state and society in the making of foreign economic policies. This article examines trade and development policies in Colombia, one of Latin America's more institutionalized democracies. Colombia was one of the first countries in Latin America to begin a major reorientation away from full dependence on ISI as a strategy of development. The research shows that domestic political institutions and actors have had a decisive impact on the character and direction of foreign economic policies. The study also illustrates how state capacity for economic management is enhanced by bureaucratic insulation and institutional reform. Carlos E. Juárez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the politics of trade liberalization in Latin America, government-business relations in developing democracies, and comparative political economy. He was a visiting researcher and lecturer at theUniversidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia from 1991–1992. For 1993–1994 he will be a visiting research fellow with the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.     

Embedded mercantilism and open regionalism: The crisis of a regional political project

This paper advances the argument that moves towards regional integration need to be understood as 'regional governance projects' undertaken by domestic actors and coalitions. Regional political projects--such as open regionalism--have roots in domestic structures, and it is this which defines the broad configuration of the regional political economy. On the basis of this framework the paper suggests, first, that the strategy of open regionalism was contingent on a particular configuration of power and interests in the domestic and external economy (embedded mercantilism). Second, this system of embedded mercantilism depended on a set of domestic coalitions between tradeable and non-tradeable sectors of the economy. The non-tradeable sector in Southeast Asia was entrenched within a particular system of political patronage. Third, the Asian crisis and other structural changes in the international economy have made these domestic coalitions less sustainable, thereby creating opportunities for new forms of regional governance projects.     

The Transformation of the Western State: The Growth of Democracy,Autocracy, and State Power Since 1800

This article uses POLITY II, a new dataset on the authority traits of 155 countries, to assess some general historical arguments about the dynamics of political change in Europe and Latin America from 1800 to 1986. The analysis, relying mainly on graphs, focuses first on the shifting balance between democratic and autocratic patterns in each world region and identifies some of the internal and international circumstances underlying the trends, and deviations from them. Trends in three indicators of state power also are examined in the two regions: the state's capacity to direct social and economic life, the coherence of political institutions, and military manpower. The state's capacity has increased steadily in both regions; coherence has increased in the European countries but not Latin America; while military power has fluctuated widley in both regions. The article is foundational to a series of more detailed longitudinal studies of the processes of state growth. Ted Robert Gurr is a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Scholar at the University's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (Mill Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742). Among his 14 books and monographs areWhy Men Rebel (awarded the Woodrow Wilson Prize as best book in political science of 1970).Patterns of Authority: A comparative Basis for Political Inquiry (with Harry Eckstein, 1975), andViolence in America, (3d edition. 1989). He is engaged in a long-term global study of minorities' involvement in conflict and its consequences and resolution. Keith Jaggers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics, Campus Box 333, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. He is co-author with Will H. Moore of “Deprivation, Mobilization, and the State,” recently published in theJournal of Developing Societies, and is currently working on an empirical study of the impact of war on the growth of the state. Will H. Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics. He is also a co-author with Maro Ellena of a forthcoming article inWestern Political Quarterly on the cross-national determinants of political violence. His current research interests include the resolution of internal wars and the formation of coercive states.     

Social capital in civic and stressful societies

This article examines social capital with particular reference to societies where distrust of institutions has been the norm. The first section describes alternative relationships between individuals and institutions in civil and uncivil societies. The second makes clear the important distinction betweensocial network capital andorganizational capital. The former can be used to achieve freedom from the state; the latter implies a trustworthy state. The third section presents empirical survey data from the New Democracies Barometer in nine post-Communist societies; the data measure trust, scepticism and distrust in fifteen institutions. The following sections use multivariate analysis to account for differences in individual levels of trust, and discuss the implications for theories of civic democracy. Richard Rose received his doctorate from Oxford University. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. William Mishler received his doctorate from Duke University. He has published extensively in the fields of methodology, legislative studies, and political economy.     

Liberalization and ethnic conflict in Latin America

Most contemporary analysts explain ethnic identity as a socially rooted phenomenon which can be catalyzed by changes in both economic and political conditions. Taking the 1982 debt crisis as a main triggering event, this article analyzes the relationship between economic adjustment and increasing levels of indigenous mobilization in Latin America. Through a comparison of the Bolivian, Peruvian, and Mexican cases,the analysis reveals wide variation in the types and levels of ethnic conflict in the region. Explanations for these differences center on the timing and content of economic adjustment policies, and on the institutional opportunities available for expressing and channeling economic and political demands. The article concludes that political and economic liberalization are likely to clash when shrinking the state also removes channels for popular participation; moreover, when those that bear most of the adjustment burden are also challengers to national identity, states ignore this challenge at their peril. Alison Brysk is assistant professor of politics at the University of California at Irvine. Her book,The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina, was published by Stanford University Press. Various aspects of her current research on Latin American indigenous rights movements have appeared inComparative Political Studies, Latin American Perspectives, andPolity. Carol Wise is assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. She has published articles on Latin American political economy inInternational Organization, Latin American Research Review, and theJournal of Latin American Studies; she is the editor of a forthcoming collection entitledThe Post-NAFTA Political Economy: Mexico and the Western Hemisphere.     

Communist Legacies, Postcommunist Transformations, and the Fate of Organized Labor in Russia and China

This study aims to generate fresh hypotheses concerning emergent variations in labor politics across postcomunist settings. Although labor may be weak throughout the postcommunist world, a historical comparison of labor politics in Russia and China reveals consequential differences in the extent and sources of union weakness. Taking these differences seriously, the study asks why organized labor in Russia—in spite of a steeper decline in union membership, greater fragmentation, and a conspicuously low level of militancy—wasrelatively more effective in advancing working-class interests during economic liberalization than the growing, organizationally unified trade union apparatus in China. The comparisons suggest that some constraints on organized labor are more malleable than others, allowing for openins where labor can affect outcomes in ways that surprise, if not scare, state and business. Specifically, key differences in historical legacies and in the pace and ynamics of institutional transformation have conferred upon Russian unions key organizational, material, and symbolic resources that Chinese unions do not possess to the same degree. These differences reflect mechanisms capable of generating increasingly divergent prospects for organized labor mobilization over long-time horizons. Calvin Chen is Luce Assistant Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College. His research interests include the industrialization of the Chinese countryside, the political economy of East Asia, and labor politics in postsocialist countries. He is presently working on a book on the role of social ties and networks of trust in China’s township and village enterprises. Rudra Sil is associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include the political economy of development, comparative labor relations, postcommunist transitions, Russian and Asian studies, and the history and philosophy of social science. He is author ofManaging “Modernity”: Work, Community, and Authority in Late-Industrializing Japan and Russia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002) and coeditor ofThe Politics of Labor in a Global Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). He is presently working on a book comparing the evolution of labor politics across postcommunist countries. We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions offered by Hilary Appel, Harley Balzer, Ruth Collier, Eileen Doherty, Todor Enev, Tulia Falleti, David Ost, Lü Xiaobo, and three anonymous reviewers on drafts of this article.     

Changing development models in small economies: The case of Jamaica from the 1950s to the 1990s

By examining in detail the successes and failures of different development models in one developing country over a four-decade period, this article sketches a development model for small economies in the 1990s as an alternative to the neoliberal model pushed by the International Monetary Fund. It reviews the experience of Jamaica with various development models from the 1950s to the 1990s, with special attention focused on the experience of the Seaga government of the 1980s. It also draws lessons from the successful development experience of small European countries and of the East Asian Newly Industrialized countries. In normative terms, the alternative development model attempts to combine growth with equity and democracy. In analytical terms, it takes account of the constellation of domestic forces and appropriate political strategies, as well as of international economic and political conditions. The main features are a strong role for the state in economic interactions with transnational corporations, in identification of export markets and promotion of export production, in selective protection of domestic industry with an export potential, in promotion of agriculture linked to industrial development, in improvement of human resources and promotion of regional economic integration. Within these parameters, a crucial role is assigned to the domestic private sector and a complementary one to foreign investment. Distribution is to be addressed primarily through distribution of productive assets and access to health care and education. Evelyne Huber is professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a coauthor ofDemocratic Socialism in Jamaica andCapitalist Development and Democracy. She is currently involved in research on the changing role of the state in Latin America and on comparative social policy. John D. Stephens is professor of political science and sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is a coauthor ofDemocratic Socialism in Jamaica andCapitalist Development and Democracy. His current research focuses on options for social democracy and comparative social policy.     

Investment penetration,agrarian change,and political conflict in developing countries

This research employs a cross-national design to explore the association between direct foreign investment in agriculture, changes in the agricultural labor force, and political conflict and violence in developing countries. The results reveal different patterns of relationships for Latin American, African, and Asian societies. In Africa, foreign agricultural investments are related to higher employment in the agricultural sector, which in turn is associated with lower levels of political protest. In Latin America, Foreign agricultural investments were directly related to more protest, suggesting a xenophobic nationalist reaction to foreign penetration in this sector. There were no apparent relationships between these variables among Asian states. These results challenge the often-found contention that economic disturbances in the agricultural sector are a fundamental cause of violent uprisings and rebellions. John M. Rothgeb, Jr. is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Miami Univeristy in Oxford, Ohio 45056. He is the author ofDefining Power: Influence and Force in the Contemporary International System (St. Martin’s Press, 1993),Myths and Realities of Foreign Investiment in Poor Countries (Praeger Publishers, 1989) and numerous articles in professional journals. His current research interests include the study of the international and domestic implications of interdependence and the analysis of how economic resources may be used to exercise power in international relations.     

Labor Standards and Labor Market Flexibility in the Middle East: Free Trade and Freer Unions?

This paper examines how two, potentially opposing trends—pressure to adhere to international labor standards and movement toward greater labor market flexibility—have affected labor market characteristics in the Middle East. Focusing on 13 countries, the paper presents indices of de jure and de facto labor flexibility and standards in the region. The paper makes two main contributions. First, it develops a typology of post-independence Middle Eastern political economies based on oil dependence and political regime type (including oil monarchies, low-income republics, and low-income monarchies) to explain widely divergent sub-regional trends in labor flexibility and standards. Second, it argues that different actors have spurred changes in labor flexibility and standards in distinct sub-regional political economy groupings. In the low-income countries, the state and domestic business were most instrumental in driving increased flexibility, although unions were able to win concessions in countries where the political system permitted some voice for labor. In the oil monarchies, international pressure, particularly through negotiations over trade agreements with the USA, spurred a trend toward increased labor standards, while domestic programs to indigenize the workforce account for a trend toward decreased flexibility.     

International tutelage and domestic political will: Building a new civilian police force in El Salvador

Under peace accords signed in January of 1992, a new civilian police force replaced the military as the sole agency responsible for providing internal security in El Salvador. This new institution has the potential to substantially transform the relationship of citizen and state, to improve both human rights and public safety, and, eventually, to reduce tensions in civil-military relations. Despite extensive international participation in and verification of this project, however, implementation proved difficult. Political polarization and lack of political will on the part of the government initially undercut the civilian character of the project, while the international community proved unable or unwilling to provide sufficient material assistance. Significant improvements took place under a new presidential administration, which had greater will to implement the project as designed. William Stanley is assistant professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches international and Latin American politics. His research focuses on how domestic and international political forces interact with the institutional characteristics of military and police agencies to affect the frequency of human rights violations. His bookElite Politics, State Violence, and Civil War in El Salvador is forthcoming from Temple University Press. He has published various articles on human rights, migration and refugee affairs, and on the role of the United Nations in post-conflict peace consolidation in Central America.     

EU trade and development policy beyond the ACP: subordinating developmental to commercial imperatives in the reform of GSP

Following the stagnation of negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific states, the centrepiece of the European Union's (EU's) trade and development strategy has been a reform of the Generalised System of Preferences. Although policy-makers in the Commission's Directorate General for Trade have argued they are ‘refocusing’ these preferences on the ‘neediest’, by rendering a significant proportion of emerging economies' exports ineligible for the scheme, this article argues that the reform is actually part of a broader ‘reciprocity’ agenda being pursued in the context of the current economic crisis. This is about ensuring the EU possesses sufficient offensive leverage in ongoing free trade agreement negotiations, rather than representing any mercantilist move towards greater domestic protection. In arguing that the EU's developmental trade agenda is increasingly subordinated to commercial imperatives, this article adds to a literature that has situated the study of EU trade and development policy within the field of political economy.     

The Long Road to Civilian Supremacy

This article analyzes civil-military relations in Chile, focusing on the period between 1990 and 1998. It analyzes military interests and civil-military channels. The four main cases examined in this article are situations when civilians sought to make decisions the military opposed that affected core military interests. They shed light on the degree to which formal institutions were able to function effectively in very tense situations. The cases are the military movements of 1990 and 1993, the 1995 imprisonment of Manuel Contreras, and the 1998 constitutional accusation against Augusto Pinochet. The ability of the Chilean military to pursue its interests successfully by circumventing formal channels in the face of opposition from civilian policymakers demonstrates that the road to civilian supremacy is long and the end is not clearly in sight. Gregory Weeks is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of articles in Hemisphere Journal of Third World Studies, andThird World Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999.     

The spaces of economic crisis: Asia and the reconfiguration of neo-Marxist crisis theory

Neo-Weberian and Marxist theories of crisis have typically been built around analysis of crisis tendencies in a single industrially developed national economy. While neo-Marxist theories of development have noted various implications of analyses that take seriously the specificities of capitalism in developing countries, there is somewhat less work from neo-Marxist perspectives on theories of crisis. The economic crisis that hit Asia in 1997 has important transnational and subnational dimensions that invite further elaboration of such a neo-Marxist perspective. This article engages such elaboration through critical reconfiguration of Samir Amin’s core-periphery spatial ontology and deployment of this reconfigured ontology to explain specific features of the uneven development of the Asian crisis. Jim Glassman is assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His interests are in state theory and the political economy of development in newly industrializing countries of Southeast Asia. He has conducted previous research on industrial development in Thailand, as well as on the economic crisis and structural adjustment in Thailand, South Korea, and Indonesia. His current research focuses on populist and nationalist political reactions to the Asian economic crisis. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Global Economic Geography Conference in Singapore, December 1999. The author would like to thank participants in that conference, along with Ruth Berins Collier, Eric Sheppard, and two anonymous SCID reviewers for valuable comments and criticisms. Some of the research for the article was undertaken with the assistance of an Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia.