Meeting the challenge: state revenue raising

Recent trends in state tax revenue reveal that overall reliance of states on taxes have been declining for the last 43 years. Faced with reduction in tax revenues, states have restructured their tax systems to meet public demand for more services. State income taxes are the one type of tax that has risen consistently. What causes state policy makers to rely on this type of tax? This research addresses this question.     

Fundamental Redesign of Financial Law: The Indian Approach

India is at the cusp of important financial sector regulatory reform. The reform aims at deeper changes in financial sector laws and regulatory architecture. While many incremental reforms were undertaken in the last two decades, the pace of change has slowed down owing to the constraints posed by the underlying legal framework. The key problems in the financial sector include: lack of financial inclusion, a glacial pace of innovation, the growth of an unregulated shadow financial system, numerous ponzi schemes, high inflation, and barriers to capital flows. In the last decade, there have been many efforts in rethinking financial sector regulation to address these problems. A group of expert committees created a consensus around a strategy for change, which has led to a draft law proposed by the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission set up by the Ministry of Finance of the Government of India.     

Morality,Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand,Eastern India

Corruption is analysed by addressing the interrelations between the moral and political economy regulating state-based welfare provision in Jharkhand, India. On the one hand, the article focuses on the rural elite to show that ‘corrupt’ practices are not just guided by financial utility but also by non-material interests, underpinned by a multivarious moral economy. On the other hand, the article shows that the poorest in the rural areas (adivasis or Scheduled Tribes) keep away from the state, seeing it as beyond the moral pale, and instead resurrect an alternative sovereign structure. The adivasi perspectives are influenced by a political economy of historical experiences of the state and interrelations with the elites. The paper concludes that a particular political economy is intimately connected with a moral economy, and that transformations in political economy affect the moral economy.     

Do Remittances Diminish Social Violence?

This paper represents the first attempt to formalise the relationship between remittances and social violence by developing a model that predicts that migrants’ remittances lead to the reduction of social violence in the recipient economy under the condition that remittances increase the average product of labour. Using homicide data as an indicator of social violence, we tested our model’s prediction. Controlling for the endogeneity problem with appropriate instruments, we found that remittances tend to reduce social violence. We performed sensitivity analysis on remittances in the empirical specification and found it robust with an unchanged negative sign.     

Minority entrepreneurs and firm performance in sub‐Saharan Africa

This study focuses on the role of entrepreneurs in the private sector in sub‐Saharan Africa. Using data from the Regional Program on Enterprise Development (RPED) and controlling for various factors, our analysis compares growth rates of indigenously owned African firms with firms owned by entrepreneurs of Asian or European descent, in Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. We find that after controlling for firm size and age, various entrepreneurial characteristics, and sector and country differences, minority (or non‐indigenous) entrepreneur firms start out larger and grow significantly faster than indigenously‐owned African firms. Our results are consistent with theories that argue that informational and financial networks created by minority entrepreneurs provide access to credit, information, and technology for members of these networks. We also find that within indigenously‐owned African firms, entrepreneurs with secondary and/or university education realise a higher rate of growth; access to education presumably enables indigenous African entrepreneurs to develop managerial skills that serve as a substitute for the informational and financial networks created by minority entrepreneurs.     

Public Administration Reform in a Challenging Environment: A Review of the Establishment of the Health Economics and Financing Directorate (HEFD) within the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health

The purpose of this article is to provide an example of recent public administration reform in Afghanistan. In 2003, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) established the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) and other health services. To date, service delivery has been conducted largely by NGOs, funded by the main international donors, and managed by the Grant and Contracts Management Unit (GCMU) of the MoPH. Despite these advancements, Afghanistan continues to face significant challenges in health service provision and policy. In 2009, the GCMU was restructured into the Health Economics and Financing Directorate (HEFD), which broadened the scope of the Unit to conduct important economic analyses. This article examines the MoPH's role in health financing as a developing institution engaged in applied health economics and policy analysis. This development will allow the MoPH to build evidence for policy-making and further establish its stewardship role in the health sector.     

Imam Samudra's Justification for Bali Bombing 1

The primary objective of this article is to provide a map of Imam Samudra's thinking behind Bali bombing I as written in his book Aku Melawan Teroris to those who are not able to read the book in its original Indonesian language with an assumption that counterideological effort cannot be executed effectively without understanding the ideas held by terrorism perpetrators. To add value, the article also offers a comparative study between Samudra's thinking and Al Qaeda's ideology. It then points out and provides brief alternative viewpoints to Samudra's thinking. The article ends with some policy recommendations pertaining to counterideological work.     

"Connecting" and "Disconnecting" With Civic Life: Patterns of Internet Use and the Production of Social Capital

This article explores the relationship between Internet use and the individual-level production of social capital. To do so, the authors adopt a motivational perspective to distinguish among types of Internet use when examining the factors predicting civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and life contentment. The predictive power of new media use is then analyzed relative to key demographic, contextual, and traditional media use variables using the 1999 DDB Life Style Study. Although the size of associations is generally small, the data suggest that informational uses of the Internet are positively related to individual differences in the production of social capital, whereas social-recreational uses are negatively related to these civic indicators. Analyses within subsamples defined by generational age breaks further suggest that social capital production is related to Internet use among Generation X, while it is tied to television use among Baby Boomers and newspaper use among members of the Civic Generation. The possibility of life cycle and cohort effects is discussed.     

Constraining consolidation: military politics and democracy in Pakistan (2007–2013)

Why do some militaries retain high authoritarian prerogatives during transitions from militarized authoritarian rule? The Pakistan military's 2007 extrication shows that an important part of the answer lies in the level of structural differentiation between the “military government” and the “military institution”. Despite sustained contentious opposition to military rule, the high level of separation between these two military dimensions of the state allowed the institutional military to delink itself from the discredited dictatorship and exit on its own terms. In the post-authoritarian context, the military has preserved its expansive prerogatives by using a variety of adaptive contestation mechanisms – including the mobilization of the media and the judiciary – that act as a continuing source of political instability and uncertainty.     

Methadone-related deaths in Norway

IntroductionThe use of methadone in opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) is potentially associated with a number of adverse effects and the risk of fatal toxicity. Increased methadone availability may lead to an increase in methadone-related deaths. We have investigated methadone-related deaths in Norway over the period 2000–2006.Materials and methodsMethadone-positive samples over the period 2000–2006 were identified from forensic toxicological investigations, and demographic and toxicological data were retrieved. The cases were cross-linked with the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry and regional OMT registers.ResultsA total of 312 individuals had died after taking methadone over the period 2000–2006, predominantly men with a mean age of 36. In 85% of cases (n = 264), the deceased had died of a methadone-related intoxication, most often in combination with other drugs, including benzodiazepines, cannabis and other opioids. Only 22% of the deceased had been in OMT at the time of death. A larger proportion of OMT patients had died of causes other than intoxications compared to those not in OMT (30% vs. 8%, respectively), most commonly related to disease.ConclusionsOne methadone-related death occurred, on average, every week over the time period investigated. Only 22% of the deceased were registered in opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) programs. The findings underline the need to control diversion of medication from OMT programs.