Institutions for high-quality growth: What they are and how to acquire them

This article opens with a discussion of the types of institutions that allow markets to perform adequately. While we can identify in broad terms what these are, there is no unique mapping between markets and the non-market institutions that underpin them. The paper emphasizes the importance of “local knowledge”, and argues that a strategy of institution building must not over-emphasize best-practice “blueprints” at the expense of experimentation. Participatory political systems are the most effective ones for processing and aggregating local knowledge. Democracy is a meta-institution for building good institutions. A range of evidence indicates that participatory democracies enable higher-quality growth. Sakenn pe prie dan sa fason (Everyone can pray as he likes.) —Mauritian folk wisdom This paper was originally prepared for the International Monetary Fund’s Conference on Second-Generation Reforms, Washington, DC, November 8–9, 1999. I thank Ruth Collier, Steve Fish, Mohsin Khan, Saleh Nsouli, conference participants, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Dani Rodrik is professor of international political economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also the research coordinator for the Group of 24 (G-24), a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London). He serves as an advisory committee member of the Institute for International Economics, senior advisor of the Overseas Development Council, and advisory committee member of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey. Professor Rodrik’s recent research is concerned with the consequences of international economic integration, the role of conflict-management institutions in determining economic performance, and the political economy of policy reform.     

A Competing Risks Model of Supreme Court Vacancies, 1789–1992

We hypothesize that Supreme Court justices will consider the likely ideological disposition of their successor in their decision to retire or remain on the Court. Furthermore, because a justice's decision to remain on the Court places him or her at risk of dying in office, it is necessary to consider a model of both voluntary and involuntary vacancies. Our study examines three broad classes of factors influential to Supreme Court vacancies: personal considerations, institutional context, and political influences. We assess the factors that affect the probability of a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court due to mortality and retirement at the individual level from 1789 to 1992, using a competing risk duration model and incorporating time-varying covariates. We find significant differences in the hazards of vacancy due to these two causes, and a number of factors are shown to influence the probability of a vacancy, including a general propensity to retire near the beginning of presidents' second terms. However, we find little evidence of the influence of political factors in either retirement-or death-related vacancies, suggesting that justices who retire do not generally do so for expressly political reasons and those who die in office rarely do so as a result of holding out for a like-minded replacement.     

Business 2.0: Kyrgyz middlemen in Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

Among the many ‘businesspeople’ whom the promise of commercial success has drawn to southern China in recent years one can find a small number of Kyrgyz middlemen. Working mostly with Russian-speaking clients, their job is to organize buying trips, coordinate with local manufacturers, translate, and oversee cargo shipments. Based on ethnographic fieldwork since 2013, this article examines in detail the careers, work routines and business model adopted by Kyrgyz middlemen in Guangzhou. I argue that in contrast to the early bazaar or shuttle traders, who have been operating across Eurasia since the 1990s, these Kyrgyz middlemen constitute a next kind of economic actor within more diversified, service-oriented and formalized value chains across post-Socialist Eurasia (referred to here as Business 2.0). One of these middlemen’s most salient contributions is to translate between the informal and formal domains of national economies as well as within cross-border economic transactions.     

An institutional assessment of the public interest and accountability committee (PIAC) in Ghana’s oil and gas sector

ABSTRACT

Ghana’s Petroleum Revenue Management Act 815 (amended to Act 893 in 2015) established the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) in 2011 with the mandate to ensure accountability and transparency in the management and usage of oil and gas revenue. This paper critically examines the activities and operations of the PIAC from 2011 vis-à-vis its legally reposed mandate. It points to severe deficit in accountability but improvements in transparency in the management of oil and gas revenues in spite of the existence and operations of the PIAC. After eight years of operation, the PIAC continues to suffer monumental challenges that undermine its effectiveness in serving as an accountability and transparency initiative in Ghana’s oil and gas sector. The paper makes some recommendation based on the empirical challenges of the PIAC identified to strengthen the PIAC to deliver effectively on its mandate.     

Effective Global Economic Governance by the World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) is the principalinternational institution for the management and regulationof the process of economic globalization. Its effectivenessin fulfilling this important task, however, leaves much to bedesired. On 4 and 5 February 2005, the Faculty of Law of MaastrichtUniversity organized an international research conference entitled‘In Search of Effective Global Economic Governance: TheCase of the World Trade Organization’. This conferencebrought together academics, WTO officials, government diplomats,national trade officials, representatives of business associationsand NGOs to discuss a wide range of issues, including: possibleimprovements to and alternatives for consensus decision-makingin the WTO; issues of transparency, democratic legitimacy andthe participation of civil society in WTO decision-making; secondarylaw-making by WTO bodies; and an expanded role for the WTO Secretariat.It is important that legal and political science scholars focustheir research efforts on the reforms needed to transform theWTO into an instrument of effective global economic governance.The main objective of the conference was, therefore, to definea comprehensive agenda for research into the institutional reformof the WTO. This article is, above all, a report of the conferenceand summarizes the main arguments made by the participants.     

A New Conceptual Framework for Analysing a Case Study on ICT and the Sanctity of the Home

The case study shows the complex reality with respect to processes of meaning construction. Ruiters framework provides a more sophisticated instrument to analyse these complex processes. Unlike the classic models of legal communication, based upon a linear causality between norm and action, and unlike the dual model of interplay between legal institutions and institutional legal facts developed by MacCormick and Weinbergers Institutional Legal Theory (ILT), the tripartite model of interplay between rule, application, and social practices, stemming from Ruiters analysis of ILT, can contribute to a more refined model of legal communication.     

Sharing benefits of globalisation through an EU-ASEAN FTA?

In the aftermath of the stalled launch of a new WTO round in Seattle in 1999, Singapore and Japan initiated a joint study into a possible bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The resulting New-Age Economic Partnership Agreement was signed in 2002, reduced barriers in trade and investment in goods as well as services, technical standards and public procurement. Other FTAs followed including a US-Singapore FTA in 2003. In response, other ASEAN countries initiated negotiations towards bilateral FTAs, such as Thailand with India and Malaysia with Japan etc. Moreover, China declared its intention to enter into a FTA with the ASEAN by 2012. The failure at Cancun in 2003 implies that the Doha Development Agenda will not be achieved within the time-frame set. In this environment, the question of a feasibility of an inter-regional EU-ASEAN FTA is investigated. ASEANs trade policy regime is opening up and the gains of further tariff elimination will be modest, because most ASEAN countries already apply low tariffs, while those of the EU on import from ASEAN are low as well – e.g. for Singapore the tariff rate is merely 1.04 per cent (trade weighted). Nevertheless, a further reduction will benefit both EU and ASEAN because a significant share of imports is intra-firm trade, with EU firms operating from ASEAN as a production platform for the EU markets. However, for an EU-ASEAN FTA to be worthwhile, it must generate benefits on issues relating to non-tariff barriers to trade, esp. technical standards, SPS and mutual recognition of testing. Further significant benefits to EU and ASEAN may be realised by advancing liberalisation of international trade in services (e.g. banking and insurance licences, air and sea transport). Reducing restrictions on foreign direct investment in selectedservice sectors is bound to enhance investment flows from the EU to ASEAN.This article draws extensively on a study directed by the author with Dr. Paul Brenton, Prof. Ludo Cuyvers and Prof. Patrick Messerlin (van der Geest et al. 2003). Research assistance by Ms. Vanessa Sumo and Ms. Roberta Zavoretti is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the European Institute for Asian Studies or of its sponsors. The author is solely responsible for any remaining errors or inaccuracies. All comments are welcomed at w.vandergeest@eias.org