Socially responsible investment and the development agenda: peering behind the progressive veil of non-financial benchmarking

One of the most striking trends in global development finance has been the growing role of Western-based, institutional investors. Pension funds in particular have played a leading part in supplying capital to publicly traded corporations in emerging market economies. An important feature of this type of financing has been the trend to make investment conditional not only on sound economic fundamentals, but also on a series of non-financial (or social) risk indicators (eg meeting labour standards and human rights). Despite the significance of non-financial benchmarking, these strategies have not been subjected to critical analysis, especially with regard to their wider impact on the reproduction of the mainstream development paradigm. This article addresses this gap by focusing on the benchmarking strategies of one of the world's largest pension funds: the California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers). Calpers's rating instrument, the Permissible Country Index (pci), employs both financial and non-financial risk indicators to screen its investments in 27 emerging markets. I argue that, despite its progressive sheen, the pci not only reproduces but also reinforces neoliberal forms of discipline and exploitation in the global South. It does this through coercive measures, such as divestment (ie removing a country from the pci), as well as through the construction of specific forms of knowledge that act to normalise the expansion and restructuring of spaces of capital in the global South.     

The Transnational Debt Architecture and Emerging Markets: the politics of paradoxes and punishment

The Argentine default at the end of 2001 highlighted the ongoing problems plaguing the existing transnational debt architecture, namely the tensions between creditor rights and human rights. While these debates have thrown important light on what needs to be done in terms of improving the transnational debt architecture, few studies have actually attempted to evaluate critically the manner in which transnational debt has been managed since the outset of the Bretton Woods system in 1944. I argue that the postwar informal arrangement governing transnational debt architecture not only helps augment the power of credit to serve as an effective form of social discipline, but that it is also profoundly contradictory. Through an historical survey, spanning the beginning of the Bretton Woods system to the recent Argentine default, I demonstrate that the informal nature of the transnational debt architecture, coupled with the mounting power of global financial capitals over debtor states, has played a major role in bringing about increased levels of volatility and vulnerability in the international credit system.     

Public Sector Commissioning: Experiences of Voluntary Organizations Delivering Health and Social Services

The perceived benefits to users and beneficiaries of voluntary organizations delivering public sector services have been well documented and include the engagement with parts of society that the state cannot reach, personalized service delivery, and improved services. There is a lack of clarity, however, as to whether these perceived benefits are being realized. This article presents the experiences of voluntary sector organizations involved in public sector commissioning. The research suggests that the public sector is limiting the voluntary sector's engagement in service design and performance monitoring. These findings raise questions about the role of the voluntary sector in public service provision.     

Application of operational psychology to assessment of inmates

Abstract

The newly developed actuarial risk instruments, Static-2002 (Hanson & Thornton, 2003a) and Risk Matrix 2000 (RM2000) (Thornton et al., 2003), were cross-validated and compared with Static-99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) in a retrospective follow-up study of 304 forensic psychiatrically evaluated sexual offenders (mean time-at-risk=14.8 years). All instruments predicted any sexual, non-sexual violent and any violent recidivism moderately for child molesters [area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC)=0.67 (95% CI=0.57–0.77) to 0.76 (95% CI=0.68–0.85)] but poorly for rapists [AUCs=0.64 (95% CI=0.51–0.70) to 0.68 (95% CI=0.59–0.77)]. The instruments also predicted severe sexual recidivism moderately for child molesters [AUCs=0.74 (95% CI=0.63–0.86) to 0.79 (95% CI=0.70–0.89)] but were of no value in informing on this outcome for rapists [AUCs=0.58 (95% CI=0.47–0.68) to 0.63 (95% CI=0.53–0.73)]. AUC estimates were generally higher for Static-2002 and RM2000 than for Static-99, but no single instrument demonstrated statistical superiority. The study provides support for implementing actuarial instruments in applied risk assessments of child molesters.     

Engineers versus managers: experts,market-making and state-building in Putin's Russia

Abstract

Market-making and state-building are mutually reinforcing processes. This paper documents the role played in these processes by two groups of experts in Russia's electricity sector: technical experts and managerially trained experts. I develop two arguments: (1) a shift in the relative power positions of these two groups was a constitutive element of the marketization and liberalization of the electricity sector. The victory of the managerial experts made assets legible and therefore ‘value-able’. (2) the paper demonstrates that the promotion of managerial experts at the expense of technical experts was a deeply political transformation, as it involved the replacement of a well-established, well-connected group of incumbent political actors. More specifically, I show how the promotion of managerial experts at the expense of technical experts helped the federal government of President Putin eliminate one of the main challengers to its ability to regulate economic activity from the centre – regional governors.     

The centre no longer holds: The rise of regional leagues in Italian politics

The principal argument in this article is that the recent emergence of regional leagues in Italian politics is epiphenomenal to broader socio‐economic changes which have occurred in the country since the 1960s. The emergence of regional leagues are a reflection of the differentiation of Italian civil society from a centralised political authority ‐ mediated through parties ‐ and the development of regional and local units as centres of economic and political legitimacy and representation.