Estimation of Vulnerability to Poverty Using a Multilevel Longitudinal Model: Evidence from the Philippines

Using the panel data for the Philippines in 2003–2009, we estimate a three-level random coefficient model to measure household vulnerability and to decompose it into idiosyncratic and covariate components. We correct heterogeneity bias using Bell and Jones’s ‘within-between’ formulation. A majority of the poor and 18 per cent of the non-poor are found to be vulnerable to unobservable shocks, while both groups of households are more susceptible to idiosyncratic shocks than to covariate shocks. Adequate safety nets should be provided for vulnerable households that lack access to infrastructure, or are larger in size with more dependents and less-educated heads.     

Ethnic Inequality and the Strength of Ethnic Identities in Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethnic inequality has been argued to have numerous pernicious effects. Among other things, scholars have argued that it breeds political violence, destabilizes democracy, and impedes economic development. While the arguments developed by these literatures implicitly assume that ethnic inequality increases the degree to which individuals identify with their ethnicity, this assumption has yet to be tested empirically at the individual-level. This paper argues and empirically demonstrates that between-ethnic group inequality does strengthen ethnic identities. However, we also find that the magnitude of its effect weakens as inequality within ethnic groups increases. That is, individuals identify most strongly with their ethnic identity when ethnicity is reinforced by economic inequality. Using the Afrobarometer, we provide the first cross-national empirical test of the effect of ethnic inequality on the strength of ethnic identities at the individual-level. Our dataset covers 21 sub-Saharan African countries and 85 ethnic groups. Results strongly support our hypothesis.     

Prestigious publications and public relevance: Vietnam war and black protest in the ASR and APSR

This study examines the manner and the extent to which the social sciences are prepared to address large scale, long term historical change. Particularly, the American Political Science Review and the American Sociological Review are subjected to a content analysis with regards to their analyses of the Vietnamese war and the Black uprisings of the 1960s. The results identify the fact that the most preeminent social science journals failed to analyze the conflicts; either prior to, during or after their emergence. This suggests, at a general level, that critical reflection of the dominant theoretical paradigms of social science did not take place. Moreover, it is suggested, on a more specific level, that the fundamental problem was the bankruptcy of the 1950s paradigm for the 1960s and the incapacity of the more influential journals to identify, address and overcome this intellectual limitation.     

The organization of influence on the EC's common agricultural policy: A network approach

Abstract The common agricultural policy of the EC with its market regulations is decided at EC level by a multilevel system of government, in which the Commission and the parliamentary parties of the European Parliament play the supranational role and the national ministries of agriculture act as parts of the intergovernmental system of the Council of Ministers. National interest groups have thereby three major access routes to the EC system, first through their national governments, or second indirectly, transmitted by their European peak organizations, or third directly to the supranational EC actors. The network approach is applied to study empirically the densities of access through these various routes. The links between actors in the agricultural policy domain are conceptualized as links for the exchange of resources, the most important resource of a policy domain being the final control of policy decisions. The political actors of the governance system originally hold full control of this valuable resource which they exchange for influence resources possessed by the interest groups, as public support or expert knowledge. Empirically, answers to the network questions depend on the type of resource and the viewpoint of the interviewed actors. An index is developed which indicates the resource flows between actors and the distribution of equilibrium control of policy decisions. It is shown that the national ministers of agriculture depend very much on the support and expertise of their national farmers' lobby, whereas the Commission relies more on contacts within the political sector itself. Multilevel systems need a lot of political coordination, so that the political actors within such systems, especially at the supranational level, seem to deal first of all with each other and not so much with the demand side of politics, compared to the national ministers of agriculture.