An evaluation of Pakistan's third five year plan

The decline in the share of agriculture and increase in secondary production's share have generally been found to accompany changes in per capita income. Cross‐section data have long exhibited such a ‘pattern of development’. Recent panel information combining cross‐section and time‐series data seemed to extend the behaviour to time series. Using analysis of co‐variance tests for such patterns over time, the paper rejects the assumption of homogeneous patterns over time. In addition 45 per cent of the individual countries deviate from the expected time series pattern. Thus such patterns certainly do appear in cross‐sections, but their existence across countries over time is not confirmed.     

Rapid knowledge: ‘Bridging research and policy’ at the Overseas Development Institute

Numerous organizations advocate the need to ‘bridge research and policy’. Philanthropic foundations, national social science funding regimes and international organizations have sought to improve knowledge utilization. Similarly, research consumers such as NGOs and government departments complain of research irrelevance for policy purposes. The concern of this article is with ‘evidence informed policy’ within the field of international development in which the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a London‐based think tank, forms the case study. Most think tanks are driven by the need to influence immediate political agendas but ODI has also developed organizational strategies of policy entrepreneurship that extend to longer term influence through creating human capital, building networks and engaging policy communities. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three Prompts for Collective Action in the Context of Digital Media

Research dealing with the nexus of collective action, political participation, and digital media confronts three challenges: conceptualizing digital media as an influence on human behavior, finding common ground among new theories, and connecting together individual-level models with structural-level theories. This article addresses these challenges as a theoretical undertaking. It argues that the digital media environment should be understood as a change in the context for action rather than as an individual-level variable, and that this changed context is relevant to behavior because it expands opportunities for action. This expansion involves a range of structural possibilities for viable collective action that entail at least three paths: organizational prompts, social prompts, and self-initiation. There are theoretical reasons to expect that individual-level attributes including age, education, ideology, and personality may differentially affect people’s susceptibility to these prompts. Future research may profit from refinements to behavioral models that account for possible differences across structurally different prompts for action.     

Plaintiffs by proxy: A firm-level approach to WTO dispute resolution

Lobbying by multinational business firms drives the agenda of international trade politics. We match Fortune Global 500 firms to WTO disputes in which they have a stake and to their political activities using public disclosure data. The quantitative evidence reveals traces of a principal-agent relationship between major MNCs and the US Trade Representative (USTR). Firms lobby and make political contributions to induce the USTR to lodge a WTO dispute, and once a dispute begins, firms increase their political activity in order to keep USTR on track. Lobbying is overwhelmingly patriotic—the side opposing the US position is barely represented—and we see little evidence of MNCs lobbying against domestic protectionism. When the United States is targeted in a dispute, lobbying by defendant-side firms substantially delays settlement, as the affected firms pressure the government to reject concessions. Lobbying on the complainant side does not delay dispute resolution, as complainant-side firms have mixed incentives, to resolve disputes quickly as well as to hold out for better terms.     

Against the odds—a free trade agreement between the European Union and Australia?

The European Union (EU) and Australia have embarked officially on a free trade agreement (FTA) negotiation process, a procedure expected to last no less than 5 years. Public pronouncements from both sides which announced the beginning of the process of negotiating an FTA marked a significant departure from the well-known tensions and difficulties which date back to the late 1950s. British entry into the then European Economic Community in 1973 meant that it had to align its trade policies with the much contested European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This had been implemented in the late 1960s and provided limitless reasons for antagonism between Australia and the EU. Yet, over time, the trade agenda changed for both sides with new actors and new agreements, and some of the previous machinery no longer providing the liberalisation of trade as intended. Both the EU and Australia have moved on—some of this change due to new political actors and new economic realities. Despite the tortured history between them, and mindful that some might be sceptical about this change of heart, real politik often imposes its own political will and the new needs may well be in sharp contrast to the past relationships. The prospect of an FTA shows how the trappings of history might be side stepped by a stronger, almost opportunistic, sense of economic benefits however small they might appear.     

Transparency by Conformity: A Field Experiment Evaluating Openness in Local Governments

Sunshine laws establishing government transparency are ubiquitous in the United States; however, the intended degree of openness is often unclear or unrealized. Although researchers have identified characteristics of government organizations or officials that affect the fulfillment of public records requests, they have not considered the influence that government organizations have on one another. This picture of independently acting organizations does not accord with the literature on diffusion in public policy and administration. This article presents a field experiment testing whether a county government's fulfillment of a public records request is influenced by the knowledge that its peers have already complied. The authors propose that knowledge of peer compliance should induce competitive pressures to comply and resolve legal ambiguity in favor of compliance. Findings indicate peer conformity affects both in the time to initial response and in the rate of complete request fulfillment.     

Financing the UN development system and the future of multilateralism

This article seeks to accomplish four tasks. It explores the historical relationship between the financing instruments that dominated different phases of the evolution of the UN development system and the understanding of the concept of multilateralism. Bearing in mind this historical context, it seeks to analyse the defining characteristics of multilateral finance in the context of the UN, in particular the characteristics that make a financial instrument more or less multilateral. It then explores a number of new financial instruments and their possible impact on the future shape multilateralism takes in the UN system. The article concludes with some thoughts on financing for a new multilateralism. In order to go beyond the core/non-core stalemate, it is necessary to develop a new variable geometry based on function, which brings into play assessed, negotiated pledges, voluntary core and non-core instruments.