Individuals, Institutions, and Inflation: Conceptual Complexity, Central Bank Independence, and the Asian Crisis

Previous research has demonstrated that greater levels of legal central bank independence produce favorable macroeconomic outcomes in the developed countries. This article expands the literature's focus on institutions to include a measure of conceptual complexity designed to capture individual-level variations in the cognitive style of central bankers themselves. I argue that the interaction of the cognitive style of central bankers with their respective institutional environments provides a more comprehensive account of the variation in achieving price stability across countries than the institutional measure alone. This hypothesis is tested in the context of the Asian Crisis as its effects diffused to the developed world between 1997 and 1999. The analysis demonstrates that different types of individuals working within different types of institutions achieved different levels of success in attaining price stability during the Asian Crisis. The most successful outcomes were achieved by conceptually complex central bankers working within legally independent central banks. The findings suggest that more research is needed concerning the individual level of analysis in the study of international political economy.     

The Fables and Foibles of Federal Capital Budgeting

This article critically evaluates the notions behind proposals to institute capital budgeting at the federal level. Four critical assumptions are found to be behind the contention that capital budgeting will improve federal investment policies: (1) an agreed-upon and accepted definition of a capital budget exists; (2) a capital budget "adds value" by improving the quality of information; (3) better information leads to better decisions; (4) better decisions lead to better actions. Each of these assumptions is evaluated using examples drawn from various levels of government and from the private sector. The general finding is that if these assumptions hold, then it is reasonable to expect that capital budgeting will lead to better programmatic decisions. Unfortunately, one or more of these assumptions usually does not hold and for this reason the case for federal capital budgeting is not very strong     

Municipal Democratisation in Rural Latin America: Methodological Insights from Ecuador

As municipal governments in Latin America acquire greater responsibility for public goods and services and the promotion of economic and social development, and play a greater role in local citizenship, questions about the quality of municipal democracy also need to be taken much more seriously. This article proposes a 'relative power approach' that examines the distribution of social power at the microregional level and its impact on municipal governance as the starting point for the analysis of municipal democratisation in Latin America. The approach lays particular emphasis on historical changes in the distribution of local productive assets, the political organisation of local social actors, coalitions between and divisions within local social sectors and the ways in which local power relations are shaped by global and national forces. The article then explores the practical application of the relative power approach to three municipalities in rural Ecuador.     

Is Standing for Women a Stand Against Terrorism? Exploring the Connection Between Women's Rights and Terrorism

Previous large-N studies have found that the advancement of women's rights leads to a decline in conflict, but no large-N research has explored the possibility of a similar relationship between women's rights and terrorism. Nevertheless, policymakers have long argued that the advancement of women's rights forms a key component of counterterrorism policy. Simply put, we lay out a rationale for the argument that increased women's rights reduce the likelihood of terrorism. We test this hypothesis using CIRI's women's rights data combined with two datasets accounting for domestic terrorism and the production of transnational terrorism. While the results show that women's rights overall are not a panacea for both types of terrorism, the provision of women's rights is shown to have a negative relationship with domestic terrorism. States and international institutions should take the differing effects of women's rights across different types of terrorism into account when designing counterterrorism policies.     

A Meiji Christian Socialist Becomes a Spokesperson for Japan: Kawakami Kiyoshi’s “Pilgrimage in the Sacred Land of Liberty”

This paper studies the life and thought of Kawakami Kiyoshi (1873–1949), a Meiji Christian socialist and prominent journalist in late 1890s Japan for the popular newspaper Yorozu chōhō (Complete morning report). Kawakami was one of the six founding members of Japan’s first but short-lived Social Democratic Party (Shakai minshutō, 1901). After the party was forced to dissolve under the Public Peace Police Law (Chian keisatsuhō, 1900) on 16 July 1901, Kawakami left for the USA to take up a postgraduate scholarship at the University of Iowa. While in the USA, he continued his career in the press, establishing himself as a well-respected international journalist. This paper focuses on his earlier thoughts, those developed during his “pilgrimage” to the USA from 1901 to 1907, during which his interests shifted from a gradual social reform to the issue of nascent anti-Japanese agitation in California and the question of Japanese immigration. During this time, he became convicted of the humanitarian ideals of Christianity and the values of sympathy and tolerance found in the chivalrous moral tradition. This journalistic period is under-explored in the literature and yet is essential in understanding Kawakami’s later role in US-Japan relations.