Survival at the Intersection of Government and Business: The Unique Case of the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade)

The Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) is a government organization whose responsibility is to promote Australian exports and investment facilitation in global markets. It has a unique position of being a government agency and at the same time working alongside and with business in assisting exporters enter overseas markets. This relationship is often strained both for reasons of changing government preferences in terms of assisting exporters as well as pressures on the government budgets. Yet Austrade has been able to remain a steadfast intersection between government and business despite the competing strategies of its two main stakeholders – government and business. This paper assesses Austrade as a case of organizational survival maintaining its equilibrium through sound management and serendipity.     

What are the strategic and economic implications for South Asia of China's Maritime Silk Road initiative?

This article focuses on South Asia's role in China's Maritime Silk Road (MSR) initiative. Given the saliency of this MSR enterprise as part of ChinesePresident Xi Jinping’s “One-Belt-One-Road” strategy, how this ambitious scheme impacts China’s relations with South Asian states along the MSR’s route, i.e. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh, merits investigation. The fate of the MSR will be determined by China’s relations with these states, since South Asia is in the middle of major sea-lanes between East/Southeast Asia and Middle East/Europe. The study examines the intentions and executions of China’s MSR projects in South Asia, evaluates the political and economic calculations of participating in the MSR for regional states, and identifies actions taken by them that can decide the initiative’s success. Politically, reactions of South Asian states to the MSR are explained as: fear of expanding Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean for India; and attempts by which Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh use China to counteract possible domination by India. Economically, two MSR pathways for South Asian states are analyzed: increases in Chinese infrastructure investments; and expansion in South Asia-China trade; both of which are reducible by loans owed to China, or “strings”/conditions attached.     

The compensation hypothesis goes east: FDI and welfare state demand in postcommunist countries

While existing research provides evidence that globalisation sparks citizen demand for the welfare state in wealthy Western democracies, less is known about how globalisation affects public demand for welfare elsewhere. This study explores the link between globalisation and welfare preferences in postcommunist countries by examining workers at multinational corporations (MNCs). These workers have previously been found to have lower levels of job security, even in Western Europe. Additionally, in the postcommunist context, MNC employment also frequently offers better opportunities than other available jobs. This combination of risk and benefit creates higher demand for social insurance (such as unemployment insurance) because MNC workers have both higher job insecurity and higher costs of job loss (if the benefits of MNC employment make it difficult to find an equally good job). Original survey data from Ukraine shows that MNC workers experience greater insecurity and are paid more than other workers. They also express preferences for more expansive welfare programmes, prioritising those related to labour market insurance. This pattern of MNC workers’ experience and preferences is confirmed in cross-national survey data from 30 peripheral economies, demonstrating that the compensation hypothesis has wider application than previously shown.     

Inside Lobbying on the Regulation of New Plant Breeding Techniques in the European Union: Determinants of Venue Choices

In July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided that new plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) fall within the scope of the restrictive provisions on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Previously, various actors had lobbied in order to influence the European Union’s (EU’s) regulatory decision on NPBTs. This study examines the venue choices taken by Cibus, a biotech company that promoted NPBT deregulation. It shows that the firm bypassed the EU level and that it lobbied competent authorities (CAs) in certain member states to gain support for the deregulation of NPBTs. Cibus chose the CAs because their institutional “closedness” reduced the risk of the debate over the deregulation of NPBTs becoming public. However, the CA’s specific competences and their influence on EU decision making were of likewise importance. The firm lobbied CAs based in Finland, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Two factors appear to have influenced Cibus’ choices for these countries: high‐level political support for agribiotech and the high relevance of biotech sectors. In contrast, public support for GMOs turned out to have hardly any influence, and virtually no association could be observed for the agricultural application of biotechnology in the past nor for the weakness of domestic anti‐GMO lobby groups. Finally, the in‐depth study on Germany affirms that “closedness” was important for Cibus’ choices and reveals that technical information served as a venue‐internal factor that influenced the firm’s choices.     

‘Fragile States’: introducing a political concept

The special issue ‘Fragile States: A Political Concept’ investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the oecd, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of ‘fragile states’ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept.     

Family farming in Brazil: evolution between the 1996 and 2006 agricultural censuses

This article compares the main findings of Brazilian agricultural census data of 1996 with the same of 2006 by applying the methodology known as ‘FAO/INCRA’ (Food Agriculture Organization/Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária) which allows the characterization of family farms in relation to the total universe of farms. In this comparison several variables are shown, including the share of family farming in the total value of production, in the total number of farms, utilization of modern technology and partial factor productivity. Census data shows that family farming has changed from 37.91 percent of total production value to 36.11 percent during a decade of strong expansion of agriculture as a whole, demonstrating the economic relevance of this segment which, besides producing food, is integrated in the most important productive agricultural chains of the Brazilian agribusiness. Family farming is a heterogeneous segment, with different sub-segments. During the studied period of ten years the most rich of these sub-segments (A) has increased participation in total production, while the poorer sub-segments (C and D) have only grown in absolute terms without a corresponding increase in production.     

Biotechnology and bio-hegemony in Uganda: unraveling the social relations underpinning the promotion of genetically modified crops into new African markets

This paper aims to uncover the social relations used to promote genetically modified (GM) crops into new African markets. It unravels the network of corporate actors, development agencies, policy officials, and research scientists that support the unquestioned dominance of GM in Uganda, which houses one of the largest experimental program dedicated to agricultural biotechnology on the continent. Gramscian insights reveal how these constellations of power align to support biotechnology at the expense of other technological possibilities, and how this consensus maintains its position of dominance while remaining largely unquestioned and unchallenged.     

Knowledge and agrarian de-collectivisation in Kazakhstan

The agrarian de-collectivisation in Kazakhstan is an instructive case for examining the relative viability of large-scale farming vis-à-vis smallholder agriculture. Within the transition from communism to capitalism in Kazakhstan, de-collectivisation involved not only a redefinition of property rights but also a dramatic rupture with former modes of agricultural knowledge generation and use. Up to now, however, the role of knowledge and skills in shaping de-collectivisation has received scant attention in the literature on postsocialism. This article argues that the loss and inadequacy of knowledge, following the collapse of knowledge institutions and the shift from large-scale knowledge-intensive mechanised farming to predominantly manual farming on small plots, needs to form part of any explanation of the postsocialist agrarian crisis. The analysis shows the importance of studying access to, and control over, knowledge in constructing a theory of agricultural labour processes.     

Prosperity in crisis and the longue durée in Africa

ABSTRACT

Understanding the evolution and tenacity of particular ways of envisaging economic growth and development for Africa requires a form of analytical history that examines how conceptual structures function over the longue durée. Such an approach is more than simply empirical analysis through time or a set of abstractions based on the self-understandings of historical agents. It involves the development of a hypothetical analytic structure which through its own forms of transformation eventually comes to play a role in shaping the lived world of participants, including researchers, policymakers and ordinary citizens. This article uses research from Kenya and Zambia to demonstrate how a long-running – but temporally and spatially variable – focus on agricultural productivity has shaped the character of rural life in Africa, and why it has consistently failed to deliver enlarged forms of prosperity based on quality of life and ecological well-being.     

教育投资对“新生代农民工”非农收入的影响研究

目前,我国"新生代农民工"已成为农村进城务工的主体,但由于"新生代农民工"人力资本积累不足,不仅影响其非农收入的增加,同时也成为经济、社会进步的制约因素之一。因此,应加大对"新生代农民工"的教育投入,强化"新生代农民工"的职业教育,建立与完善适合"新生代农民工"职业特点的资质管理办法,以全面提高"新生代农民工"的综合素质和就业技能,有效促进"新生代农民工"非农收入的增加。