Demographic and social differentiation among Northern Peruvian peasants

In this paper, we apply the concepts of demographic and social differentiation to the analysis of inequality among rural households in the northern Peruvian department of Cajamarca. While we demonstrate that social rather than demographic differentiation is the more important process in this area, we illustrate the complementarity of Chayanov's methodological analysis of the family life cycle with a Marxist class‐theoretic framework. Both enrich the study of patterns in the agricultural sector of household labor use, family structure and composition, and income inequality.     

Fragmented Government Effects on Fiscal Policy: New Evidence

Using a panel of 22 OECD countries over the 1971–1996period, this paper extends previous literature on the effectsof fragmented government on fiscal policy outcomes in variousdirections. First, we focus on data relating to centralgovernment as alltheories refer to central government. Second, we also examinegovernment's position vis-à-vis parliament andgovernment's political fragmentation. We find evidence thatmore fragmented governmentshave higher deficits, while governments that have a largemajority in parliament have lower deficits. Right-winggovernments appear to have been fiscally more responsible inthe seventies. Political fragmentation does not affect agovernment's budget deficit.     

Who will guard the guardians? Amartya Sen's contribution to development evaluation

An Action Learning process integrated with Sen's Capability Approach can support development agencies to formulate interventions that enhance freedom. The authors show that putting this approach into practice has important implications for the manner in which ‘development’ is undertaken as an ideological project. It may help to examine and challenge those who hold power in development: the guardians. This finding is the result of an emergent Action Learning process that was initiated by applying Sen's principles to focus-group interviews with women who care for people affected by HIV and AIDS. One of the findings of these focus groups was that the participants valued the process because it opened a space for them to influence the work of the implementing NGO. Essentially, they could hold the implementing agency to account. Reflection on this outcome by the agency led to important shifts in processes that are more supportive of freedom.     

The Criminal Justice Approach: Case Examples

The article presents a special form of a European comparative synopsis. For this case examples have been chosen ranging from administrative or minor (criminal) offences to increasingly serious offences and offenders. In this way it can be comparatively demonstrated how the criminal justice systems studied handle specific cases and whether they do so in a similar or different way.     

Tax Fraud and Selective Law Enforcement

This article presents a new conceptual framework for research into tax fraud and law enforcement. Informed by research approaches from across tax law, public economics, criminology, criminal justice, economics of crime, and regulatory theory, it assesses the effectiveness, and the legitimacy, of current approaches to combating tax fraud, bringing new dimensions to previously identified trends in crime control. It argues that, whilst the last decade has witnessed a significant intensification of measures that purportedly target tax fraud, preference has been consistently given to enforcement measures that maximize revenue gains rather than combat the fraud itself, even where the effect is to aggravate the non-revenue costs of tax fraud. These developments demonstrate a significant shift from tax fraud suppression to tax fraud management. The article concludes that this shift not only undermines tax equity and overall tax compliance, but also leads to selective tax enforcement, thus representing a significant risk to the rule of law.