Trade openness-industrialization nexus revisited in Africa

Economic Change and Restructuring - The objective of this paper is to revisit the nature of the link between trade openness and industrialization in Africa over the period 1990–2019. Given...     

Killing the Third World: civilisational security as US grand strategy

Abstract

This article disputes explanations of American expansionism that are based on the requirements of national security or more abstract theories such as the balance of power. In contradistinction to the imperatives of defence and survival, the article shows how civilisational factors weighed heavily on the emergence of US grand strategy at the turn of the nineteenth century. In particular assumptions about the peoples of the Third World being lesser played an important role in the conception and legitimation of imperial expansion. During this period, the US Navy went through a dramatic build-up. The article shows the ways in which the worldviews of many of the key players (such as Alfred Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt) contributed to the militarisation of global racism, a development that led to widespread killing in the Philippines and elsewhere.     

Bribing votes: A new explanation to the ``inequality-redistribution' puzzle in LDC's

The recent empirical literature on redistribution and developmentemphasizes two main evidences: (i) more redistribution generallyinduces higher growth rates and (ii) more inequality does notnecessarily increase the political demand for redistribution.These stylized facts are at odds with the correlations observedin developed countries. Several theoretical arguments can beadvanced to explain these puzzles. In this paper, it is shownthat ``vote purchases'' may be seen as an additional argument toexplain puzzle (ii). We formalize this idea and examine theconditions under which vote bribes may be an obstacle toredistribution (and thus to growth) in a developing economy.     

Constructing Reform Coalitions: The Politics of Compensations in Argentina's Economic Liberalization

It is frequently argued that the key to "successful" economic liberalization is to marginalize interest groups that profit from existing regulatory regimes. This paper contends that some established interests can craft public policies to protect their rents in the new market setting. The state may shape the interests of social actors and create proreform constituencies out of old populist and interventionist groups. In Argentina, this coalition building was achieved by constructing reform policies that granted rents in new markets to business and organized labor and by deliberately avoiding unilateral deregulation in sectors where reform would hurt traditionally powerful actors. This argument is developed through a comparative analysis of policy reform in the labor market institutions and protected industrial sectors, areas where the costs of deregulation are said to be unavoidable for the established actors.     

Puerto Rico: National security,economic growth and colonialism

Abstract

Puerto Rico's significance for the US state and imperialism has gradually deteriorated. In the context of recent global changes and new developments in the US political economy the logic that justified colonial control cannot be sustained. However, an array of counteracting political and economic forces are conspiring to overcome the altered material and geopolitical conditions that make evident the need for Puerto Rico's decolonization.

Colonialism has given rise to an array of forces that impedes any changes in Puerto Rico's formal political status. Where once the US state, corporate capital and the dominant political forces in Puerto Rico were in relative agreement on sustaining the colonial enterprise, a new constellation of competing forces has emerged. Within Puerto Rico proponents for the status, quo and those who agitate for statehood have reached virtual electoral parity. Monopoly “capital, primarily in Pharmaceuticals, dominates the local economy. However, it is challenged by North American unions and their congressional allies who seek to rescind the lucrative fiscal policies that account for these firms exorbitant profits. Agencies of the US state and congressional committees are at odds on what needs to be done to sustain an unmanageable, increasingly expensive and anachronistic colony.

This essay presents a framework for examining the array of forces and conditions that continue to erode the colonial relation and that explains colonialism's fragility in the current period of global readjustment.     

Programmed instruction and its implications in the teaching of law

“Health” is a disciplinarily imperialistic and conceptually amorphous term; as such, it defies a unifying, coherent and universal definition. These characteristics of health present enormous problems for a curriculum developer trying to chart the outlines and contents of the subject. A sure way out is to reflect carefully on Gardner's suggestion regarding the tension between depth and coverage and to make the definition of health a part of any module on health care law. In addition, the experiences of other common jurisdictions present Nigeria with a choice between a single module approach and multiple module approach to health care law.     

Visions of (In)Security and American Strategic Style

This essay was stimulated (provoked) by discussions in three separate venues: (1) a U.S. Naval War College conference on "Alternative Futures in War and Conflict: Implications for U.S. National Security," held in late 1999; (2) several recent widely circulated "blue-ribbon" reports on the subject; and (3) recent papers emerging from the U.S. defense bureaucracy speculating on strategic visions of the next ten to twenty years. My contention is that the prevailing official and quasi-official debate exhibits excessive and overly definitive emphases on: (1) particular facets of insecurity; (2) attributions to the U.S. of benign intent and capacity; and (3) assumptions that most others share that interpretation of our words and deeds. There also tends to be unwarranted neglect of representation and standing issues which discriminate for and against different policy perspectives and forms of program expertise. A plea is offered for an alternative approach based on what we know about how persons, organizations, and communities can best position themselves for (in)security futures.