Trade ‘outside the law’: Uzbek and Afghan transnational merchants between Yiwu and South-Central Asia

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the trajectories of two transnational networks present in the Chinese city of Yiwu: Afghan merchants who trade goods in and out Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan; and Uzbek traders (citizens of either Tajikistan or Uzbekistan) who commercialize their merchandise in and out Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Our aim is to capture an ethnographically grounded understanding of informal markets and economies by analysing the notion of trade ‘outside the law’, including the contested yet widely used category of the ‘smuggler’. By paying attention to the fluidity of trading practices ‘outside the law’, we also address the uses and limitations of metaphors widely used in scholarly analysis of informal markets: notably those of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ forms of globalization, and the transposition of formal-legal and informal-illegal exchanges onto the notions of economic ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’.     

Implicit Taxes Collected by State Liquor Monopolies

State monopolization or taxation aresupposedly justified because of negativeexternalities from alcohol consumption, butrecent research questions the efficacy ofsuch policies, suggesting that their actualgoals may be revenue-generation.Consideration of this hypothesis isfacilitated by estimates of the implicittaxes charged in monopoly states, whichgenerally are substantially higher thantaxes in non-monopoly states. Evidencethat monopolization and high taxes do notaffect the level of externalities is alsoexplained by adjustments that rationalindividuals make to avoid the consequencesof such policies, thus providing furthersupport for the revenue-maximizationhypothesis.     

Democracy the Swedish Way? The Exclusion of ‘Immigrants’ in Swedish Politics

Official declarations state that Sweden is today a multicultural society. At the same time, ethnic hierarchies have become increasingly conspicuous in contemporary Sweden. Recently, a governmental inquiry on structural discrimination in Swedish society presented a report analysing the relationship between the multi-ethnic composition of the Swedish population and participation in Swedish politics. This article discusses some of the main findings of the report. On the basis of a number of case studies, it illustrates how inequalities in terms of participation and influence in Swedish politics are (re)produced. One of the main conclusions drawn in the article is that all citizens that participate in Swedish politics are faced with a series of routines, conventions and idea(l)s categorising citizens according to their perceived closeness to a Swedish 'normality'. Thus, democracy not only constitutes a formalised system of impartial procedures and conventions, routines and norms that regulate the political process in a way that guarantees freedom and equality to all participants. Rather, political participation also reflects exclusionary practices long well-documented in, for example, the housing and labour markets. In order to understand these practices, it is necessary to examine the historical interconnections between nationalism and democracy . By means of the recurrent characterisation of Swedish democracy as specifically Swedish, it becomes the job of Swedes to 'enlighten' the 'immigrants' to become 'Swedish democrats'. This specific conceptualisation of democracy is founded on the ideal of an archaic national community, which in contemporary multi-ethnic Sweden is not capable of including the whole population on equal terms.     

Estimating the Impact of Education on Political Participation: Evidence from Monozygotic Twins in the United States,Denmark and Sweden

In this study we provide new evidence on the much-discussed effect of education on political participation by utilizing the quasi-experiment of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and participation within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs we are able to circumvent traditional sources of confounding of the relationship rooted in genes and early life family environment because MZ twins share both. The results of within-twin pair analyses based on surveys from the United States, Denmark and Sweden show that while the relationship between education and political participation is highly confounded by genes and/or familial environment in all three countries, a positive impact remains of years of education in the US and of high school completion in Denmark. No effect is found in Sweden. Robustness checks suggest that the observed effect is not confounded by within-twin pair differences in prenatal environment nor differential treatment during childhood, and, if anything, that it most likely constitutes a lower bound estimate.     

A functioning executive: Chester Barnard and the modern manager

“Thus the endurance of organization depends upon the quality of leadership; and that quality derives from the breadth of the morality upon which it rests.” The Functions of the Executive.By Chester I. Barnard.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.     

Which type of international organizations can settle civil wars?

International organizations (IOs) take on an increasing share of civil war mediation around the world. The determinants of IO mediation effectiveness remain poorly understood, partly because prior research has not adequately captured the institutional heterogeneity of peace-brokering IOs. To explore how mediation effectiveness depends on institutional variation, I combine newly gathered data on the design of 13 peace-brokering IOs with existing data on 109 civil war mediation episodes in the 1975-2004 period. I find that IOs with institutionalized capabilities to deploy field missions, such as peacekeeping operations, outperform other IOs as mediators of civil wars, whereas information-gathering capacity does not yield a significant advantage. The results suggest that IO enforcement assistance has a forward-looking effect: the ability to credibly signal, ex ante, that peacekeeping or monitoring forces will be deployed to enforce an agreement, helps IOs shape negotiations long before forces are actually deployed. Reaffirming the credible commitment theory of conflict resolution, the study demonstrates that there is considerable variation among external guarantors, which explains why some IOs can shift civil war disputants away from violent bargaining strategies whereas other cannot.     

Stability and change in international policy-making: A punctuated equilibrium approach

International organizations (IOs) have developed into important policy venues beyond the state. Yet our understanding of the broader dynamics of IO policy-making is limited. This article offers the first comparative analysis of macro patterns in IO policy-making. Theoretically, we draw on punctuated equilibrium theory to develop hypotheses about stability and change in the orientation of IO policy agendas. Empirically, we examine novel data on the policy output of five general-purpose IOs between 1980 and 2015, combining statistical analysis and comparative case illustrations. The analysis yields two central results. First, the policy agendas of all five IOs display patterns of punctuated equilibria, with longer periods of stability interrupted by shorter periods of dramatic change. Second, the level of institutional friction in decision-making contributes to variation in punctuations across IOs and within IOs over time. The results suggest four broader implications: (1) punctuated equilibrium theory applies to a broader empirical domain than previously thought; (2) patterns of change in IOs are more complex than conventionally expected; (3) institutional friction matters for IOs’ responsiveness to societal demands and problem pressures; and (4) deeper integration of punctuated equilibrium theory into the study of IOs can pave the way for a promising IR research agenda.     

Risk Governance of the Swedish Customs Service: Negotiating Security,Efficiency, and Poor Information

During the last decade, ‘risk management’ has become the common language through which different and sometimes contradictory expectations are brokered in the Swedish customs service. Security concerns, corporate interests and managerial reforms are all phrased—or re‐phrased—as considerations of risk. These considerations are then used to direct organizational strategy and resources. The crucial moment is the operationalization of risks, which are negotiated at the policy level, all the way down through the organization. I will argue that this has happened in the Swedish customs service during the last decade. The successive operationalizations of drugs, violation of intellectual property rights and organized crime have enabled a streamlining of the organization along the policy level risks. The resulting risk governance is mainly about managing the customs as an organization. Yet it also affects the customs' use of force by changing the way border crossers are singled out for control. The traditional, informal risk assessment at the border is being replaced—or supplemented—by formal risk profiles, constructed from the booking information provided by transportation companies. As a consequence, the control selection is increasingly based on a set of impersonal indicators such as mode of payment and possible rebooking.