Democratization in the ‘miracle’ economies

Michael R.J. Vatikiotis Political Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree London: Routledge, 1996. 230 pp. ISBN 0–415–13484–6.

Garry Rodan (ed.) Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia London: Routledge, 1996. 338 pp. ISBN 0–415–14865–0.     

Safeguarding Common-Pool Resources in Transition Economies: Experimental Evidence from Central Asia

Empirical evidence suggests that the propensity to cooperate in common pool resource dilemmas is higher for small, homogeneous groups with efficacious monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms. Given that transition from socialist to market economies is associated with larger, more heterogeneous groups with diluted opportunities for monitoring and sanctioning, individuals in later-stage transition economies may be expected to be less cooperative than their early-stage counterparts. However, evidence from experiments conducted with subjects in two economies at different stages of transition suggests that this may not be the case. These findings have implications for both theorists and practitioners alike.     

Do Nasty and Pleasant Surprises Regarding Tax Revenue Explain Spending Drifts? The Case of the Swiss Cantons

This article aims to explain the difference between the expenditure reported in governmental end-of-the-year budgets and the amounts previously forecasted in the approved beginning-of-the-year budgets. We measure how political, financial, and institutional variables affect this spending drift. We focus on two much-debated factors, namely, tax revenue budgeting errors and the stringency of fiscal rules. Our econometric approach uses a panel based on the 26 Swiss cantons covering the period of 1980 to 2011. Results suggest that stringent fiscal rules discourage budget overruns, whereas underestimating tax revenue—i.e., a budgetary “pleasant surprise”—offers the opportunity for some overspending.     

Signs of Anthropomorphism: The Case of Natural History Television Documentaries

This article employs Peirce's triadic concept of the sign, and Deleuze's theory of the image-movement to propose a social semiotic account of the ways in which visual signs in British and US natural history anthropomorphicise 'nature'. Peirce's semiotic is employed to critique both realist and relativist accounts of anthropomorphism. Although there may be a causally indexical relation between photographic signs and object, the fact that all signs are constituted by a three-way relationship between sign, object, and interpretant means that natural history documentaries, like the scientific texts that purportedly inform them, are ineluctably anthropomorphic. Deleuze's account of the image-movement is employed to explain why, far from being a dispassionate capturing of 'any-instants-whatsoevers', natural history image-movements organise movement in ways that are mediated by the semiotics of the natural history genre. As such, image-movements also constitute a form of anthropomorphism.