Risk,Credit Constraints and Financial Efficiency in Peruvian Agriculture

Based on a panel data set, we use a two-stage analysis to evaluate the effects of access to formal credit on financial efficiency of farms in northern Peru. The first stage uses non-parametric data envelope analysis to estimate farm-specific measures of financial efficiency; 28 per cent of farmers are financially inefficient and credit constraints reduce profits of these farmers by an average of between 17 and 27 per cent. The second stage uses Tobit regression to evaluate the determinants of financial inefficiency; the results point to uninsured risk as a key determinant of financial inefficiency and suggest that policies to strengthen agricultural insurance markets would likely pay large dividends in rural Peru.     

Hunger

Abstract

Books about hunger and its causes are nothing new, as anyone who follows development literature is well aware. This is probably because hunger itself has been around as long as people have been writing books. Nevertheless, 1974 was the year of a “world food crisis”: the United Nations saw fit to convene a world food conference in Rome, and a spate of new books has appeared in its aftermath to discuss the problem. Why a crisis should have congealed in 1974 from the world's perennial hunger is one of the subjects ably considered by Collins and Lappe's Food First and Susan George's How the Other Half Dies. Why so much has been written about it is a subject worth considering here.     

The place of corporate ownership and management in local government anti‐poverty strategy in Britain

Since devolution in 1999, the Welsh Government has developed a distinctive approach to the management of local government policy. Alongside an emphasis on welfarism and partnership, local authorities have been exhorted to put the citizen at the centre of public service delivery. Drawing on the notion of assemblage, developed in the governmentality literature, this paper identifies two different rationalities running through Welsh Government policy documents. On the basis of a series of interviews with government officials and their counterparts in the Welsh Local Government Association we find evidence of important tensions in the Welsh approach. While the emphasis on the citizen has worked in building a ‘political rationality’, the evidence from our interviews suggests that it works less well as a ‘government technology’.     

Controlling Local Government Spending: The Implementation and Impact of Capping Council Taxes

The level of local fiscal autonomy is widely regarded as an important indicator of the state of central-local relations and the capping of council tax increases has proved to be one of the most contentious of all of the constraints placed on local authorities by UK central government. Over the last decade the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales have moved away from capping in favour of a more consensual approach. This decision reflects the difference in scale and nature of their policy communities and appears to have been at least as successful in controlling increases in local taxes as the more directive, top-down strategy favoured by policymakers in England. The current UK government's proposals to promote local referenda rather than ministerial diktat as the means of controlling council tax levels represents a potentially important new but as yet unproven approach.     

Understanding Local Political Leadership: Constitutions,Contexts and Capabilities

Despite Labour's clear vision of a new form of local political leadership, the impact of the Local Government Act 2000 has been limited - but at the same time diverse. Local authorities have overwhelmingly selected the 'least change' option, but have elaborated the new models in a variety of ways. Drawing on case study data and a new institutionalist framework, the article looks beyond formal structures at the emerging practice of local political leadership. The government's structure-led approach has not delivered its 'ideal type' of local political leadership. The interaction of constitutions, contexts and capabilities is producing diverse experiences of political leadership and an uneven patterning of change and continuity. Future reform efforts should concentrate less upon the specification and imposition of formal structures and more upon facilitating local processes of institution-building.     

The Anglo-American “Special Relationship”: The Lazarus of International Relations

Scholars have variously queried the existence of the Anglo-American “special relationship,” consigned it to history as “special no more,” or demanded that Britain choose between its European and American relationships. These critiques have become increasingly prevalent since the Cold War. Yet the current British government, like many before it, continues to portray a choice between America and Europe as a “false choice,” and the “special relationship” has arguably deepened in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. This article contends that international diplomatic history can contribute much to understanding the “Lazarus-like” quality of the “special relationship.” Specifically it argues that a number of critical continuities in post–World War II British foreign policy survived the end of the Cold War and have since contributed heavily to the determination of the British foreign policymaking elite to maintain the “special relationship” at the same time that Britain pursues a leadership role within Europe.     

Letter from the Editor

ABSTRACT

Organizational theory and research suggests that organizational performance may be affected by environmental circumstances. However, the available evidence on this important issue for public organizations relies primarily on “objective” archival measures of the environment drawn from secondary data sources. Perceptual measures gauging managerial “subjective” views on the nature of the task environment are also likely to be important determinants of organizational outcomes. In this paper, a comprehensive model of the impact of “objective” and “subjective” task environments on the performance of local government service departments is formalized and tested. The results suggest that both objective and subjective environmental munificence are positively related to performance, and that objective and subjective environmental dynamism are negatively related to service achievements. In addition, objective task complexity is negatively related to performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.