COMRADES OR CULPRITS? DONOR ENGAGEMENT AND BUDGET TRANSPARENCY IN AID‐DEPENDENT COUNTRIES

Budget transparency has come to be considered a key aspect of governance. Over the past decade, donors have invested increasing resources in strengthening processes through which budget transparency in developing countries can be enhanced. According to the 2008 Open Budget Index (OBI) Report, however, aid dependency and budget transparency appear to be inversely correlated. This article looks at the role of donor agencies in promoting or preventing budget transparency in aid‐dependent countries. It looks at significant correlations across the whole sample of 84 countries covered in the 2008 OBI, and analyzes more specific data for a sub‐sample of 16 aid‐dependent countries, before selecting six countries for which more detailed findings are then presented. All of these countries have implemented reforms aimed at enhancing budget transparency, with substantial donor support. These, however, often had only limited success, partly because they were not well adapted to the local context, and partly because donors put limited emphasis on improving public access to budget information. Donor efforts were also often offset by other characteristics of donor interventions, namely their fragmentation, lack of transparency, and limited use of programme aid modalities such as budget support and pooled sector funding. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Environment and Energy: The Baltic Sea Gas Pipeline

Germany and Russia have agreed to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The 1,200 kilometers-long structure will run from Vyborg, Russia to Greifswald, Germany traversing the Baltic Sea. The Baltic countries, Finland, Poland and Sweden, have expressed concerns about the project. At issue is the environmental impact of the project as well as the energy, political, and socioeconomic implications.     

Family Formation in the Baltic Countries: A Transformation in the Legacy of state socialism

This article examines the transformation of nuptiality patterns in the Baltic countries since the late 1960s, in the context of long-term trends. The aim of the study is to compare the entry into first conjugal union in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and analyze the position of the Baltic countries in a broader European perspective. The analyses employ microdata from national surveys conducted in the framework of the European Family and Fertility Surveys program. Our main results on the timing and mode of union formation show that in Estonia and Latvia the shift from direct marriage to cohabitation started well before the fall of the state socialist regime, and followed a trajectory close to Scandinavian countries. In Lithuania, on the other hand, the change in the pattern of union formation has been much slower. The article discusses the factors underlying the observed similarities and dissimilarities in union formation.     

东南亚国家产业结构的演进及其特征

战后,随着东南亚国家的工业化进程,各国的产业结构发生了一系列变化,这主要表现为:农业在国内生产总值和就业的比重不断下降,工业(尤其是制造业)增加值和就业比重迅速提高,服务业增加值和就业比重总体上趋于上升。东南亚国家产业结构演变的趋势,是与世界各国工业化中产业结构变化的规律相适应。不过,由于各国经济发展存在着历史性、结构性和制度性的差异,东南亚国家产业结构的变化又有许多不同的特点。     

发达国家治理历史虚无主义的实践与启示

近年来,历史虚无主义在发达国家政治生活和舆论空间时有体现,成为不和谐因素,引起了执政当局的高度关注。为了维护意识形态安全和国家安定团结,发达国家不遗余力治理历史虚无主义,在政界、学界和新闻工作中始终强调历史清醒和"政治正确",树立底线意识;加强青少年爱国主义教育,强化历史观塑造;通过立法和司法实践,维护历史共识和民族英雄声誉;着力治理网络舆论,源头防范网络历史虚无主义。发达国家治理历史虚无主义的实践是维护资产阶级政治统治的重要举措,存在典型的"单向度思维"和不可避免的局限性,采取的一些做法对当前我国反对历史虚无主义,具有一定的借鉴意义和参考价值。     

Pathways of democratisation to human development in post‐communist countries

The article investigates the consequences of post‐Cold War regime transitions on human development in the former Soviet bloc. Relying on a mixed‐methods research strategy that combines econometric and qualitative comparative analysis, it proceeds through three consecutive steps. First, there is a discussion of how democratic institutions may solicit governments’ attention toward social issues. Second, the relationship between democratisation and human development in 21 post‐communist countries is tested. Third, democracy in its core attributes is unpacked, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to identify a few alternative institutional configurations favouring human development. The analysis reveals that not only full democracies, but also some hybrid regimes, have been successful in this task.     

Enhancing Precision and Clarity in the Study of Policy Narratives: An Analysis of Climate and Air Issues in Delhi,India

The study of policy narratives is challenged by inconsistencies and a need for more precise definitions and measurements. The goals of this article are to build precision and clarity in the study of policy narratives by developing a network‐based approach—the ego‐alter dyad—for coding characters and their interactions around a policy issue and then to illustrate this approach in the analysis of air and climate issues in Delhi, India. The empirical results show that (1) the same actors are often heroes and villains, (2) heroes and villains are associated with different actions but with similar victims or beneficiaries, (3) narrators differ in their propensity to tell hero‐heavy or villain‐heavy policy narratives, and (4) the proportion of hero‐heavy or villain‐heavy policy narratives changes over time and differs across subtopics. The article concludes with a research agenda for further theoretical and methodological advancement in studying policy narratives.     

China in Pacific Regional Politics

Abstract

Foreign aid from China to the island countries of the Pacific has grown rapidly over the last few decades and an expanding body of literature has examined various aspects of what this means for politics in the region generally. This article focuses on China’s impact on Pacific regional politics partly from the perspective of identity politics. It suggests that China has substantially increased its engagement with the Pacific island states by making use of its own identity as a South–South development partner in contrast to traditional (mainly Western) donors in the region. Unlike most traditional donors, however, China’s diplomacy and engagement are based largely on bilateralism, and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This approach could continue to limit its impact on Pacific regionalism, regardless of how it projects its image.     

Impediments besetting the negotiations for a comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and East and Southern Africa (2007–2014)

Several African, Caribbean and Pacific countries are currently negotiating World Trade Organization (WTO)-compatible reciprocal economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with the European Union (EU), agreements intended to supersede the one-sided trade preferences of the Lomé Convention. This study focuses on impediments which have bedevilled the EU–East and Southern Africa (ESA) negotiations for a transition from an interim EPA to a comprehensive EPA. These talks, which ran from 2007 to 2014, followed the expiry of a WTO waiver and the ESA's successful resistance to elements of the EU's agenda considered offensive, despite envisaged benefits provided for by the Cotonou Partnership Agreement of 2000 calling for EPAs. The study is based on qualitative primary research in which data from interviews was augmented by a synthesis of secondary sources and analysed through a thematic coding system. Findings reveal asymmetrical power relations, a marked heterogeneity in the ESA and outstanding issues in the interim EPA and WTO regulations as major impediments to the transition to a comprehensive EPA.     

Understanding the changing role of public sector performance measurement in less developed countries

This article develops a framework for understanding changes in the demand for and supply of performance information in public sector organizations in less developed countries (LDCs). New Institutional Sociology (NIS) is used to argue that pressures from specific stakeholders stimulate organizations to produce particular performance information. The article distinguishes three groups of stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, statutory boards and purchasers), and elaborates on the performance dimensions these stakeholders are interested in. The group of funding bodies, with their interest in financial performance information, used to be the most important group of stakeholders. However, statutory boards and purchasers are gaining importance as a result of recent public sector reforms, which include decentralization, marketization and the implementation of anti‐corruption programs. As a consequence of pressures coming from these stakeholders, new performance dimensions, such as the quality and quantity of services and the political governance structure, will be added to organizations' performance measurement (PM) systems. Whether these and other—often more traditional financial—performance dimensions will be balanced and integrated throughout organizations depends on the power positions of the various stakeholders. The arguments presented in this article intend to stimulate public sector organizations in LDCs to design and redesign PM systems as a response to changing stakeholder interests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.