Institutions and Economic Performance: The Use and Abuse of Culture in New Institutional Economics

Important research programs within New Institutional Economics advance culturalist arguments to explain failures of economic development. Focusing on the work of Douglass C. North and Avner Greif, this article argues that such arguments rely on an essentialist conception of culture that is both historically inaccurate and analytically misleading. Greif’s work in particular rests on a selective use of empirical data that ultimately distorts the deductive models that are at the core of his work. As a result, both scholars use culture to account for outcomes that are more adequately explained as the product of social conflict and political struggles—struggles in which culture plays a far more contingent and destabilizing role than the one they attribute to it. What is needed, I argue, is to link arguments about the persistence of inefficient institutions with a sociologically informed conception of culture as an ensemble of resources that enhance rather than constrain the scope of individual agency. To come to terms with the effects of culture on institutional formation and change it is necessary to replace the essentialism articulated by North and Greif with a strategic-instrumentalist view in which culture is compatible with a wide spectrum of economic behaviors, individual actions, and thus institutional trajectories.

试论中日关系的新向度——以前首相福田康夫对中外交遗产为中心

近年来,从小泉、安倍、再到福田,日本政府都非常重视构成两国关系之潜流的精神和价值理念领域。特别是前首相福田转变了小泉和安倍的"价值本位"外交方向,并从"回归古典"着手,力图通过重构中日两国的精神、价值大厦,使中日关系不仅仅是一种利益、利害关系的存在,而是建立在双方共同理解、追求并能够互相接受的价值阈值的基础之上。这样,中日关系才可能从根本上克服其脆弱性的一面,从而走得更远。而中日两国在第四个政治文件中就此所达成的共识,即为实现这一目标的"新向度"。无疑这是前首相福田对中外交的重要遗产。     

All the labor problems fit to print: the New York Times and the cultural production of the U.S ‘labor problem’, 1870–1932

The period that spanned the Gilded Age to the onset of the Great Depression saw the rise and relative decline of the US labor movement. The salient events of labor movements over these years undoubtedly shaped public perception about labor issues, and some scholars have been attempting to unpack the mechanisms through which depictions and characterizations of the ‘labor problem’ were produced in authoritative venues that could have shaped the future of the movement. This study goes beyond the standard practice of explaining news report volume to feature the political valance of the reports on the labor problem over a 63-year time period. The aforementioned period also saw significant changes in news reporting practices, with the rise of objective informational writing and the embrace of journalism as a profession. The change within journalism itself could potentially shape the depiction of the labor problem, yet such change has been overlooked by existing literature pertaining to the topic. This research makes a theoretical case for integrating social processes central to the labor movement and journalism from 1870 to 1932 and explains patterns in the cultural production of the labor problem in the New York Times by analyzing these two tracks of history in conjunction using both qualitative and quantitative data.     

New Public Management and Administrative Reforms in Nigeria

This study examines the Nigerian attempts to implement the New Public Management (NPM) reform. The paper aims at identifying the strand, the extent of progress made and the reason(s) for success/failure recorded. The author finds that the poor success story of the reform is as a result of the preference of the more attractive cost-saving neoliberal economic aspect to the more involving and demanding bureaucratic aspect, the inconsistencies in program implementation, and lack of strong political will common to adopting reform in developing countries. The article recommends that reforms require dealing with the critical challenges of institutionalization, inconsistency and legitimization.     

Public Administration Reform and Its Implications for Foreign Petroleum Companies in Kazakhstan

Since 2000, Kazakhstan has followed the New Public Management reform trajectory in modernizing its public sector and public service delivery. This article employs an actor-centered perspective to examine the effects of the public administration reform and its implications for foreign petroleum companies in Kazakhstan. The study builds on primary sources in the form of 81 semi-structured interviews with public servants, representatives of foreign petroleum companies and experts. The main conclusion is that the reform effects are ambiguous. Despite some success in greater efficiency of public services, many weaknesses remain, with highly varying implications for foreign petroleum companies.     

Urban Regeneration Policy from the Integrated Urban Development Model in the European Union: an Analytical Approach Based on the Study of Spanish Cities

For several years, local governments have been tackling new challenges related to the regeneration of their cities within the physical sphere, as well as in their economic and social aspects. This task is developed in accordance with what has been called the Integrated Urban Development Model, understanding the integrated nature of this approach not only in terms of the spheres of public policy involved, but also in relation to their management. In this paper, this management is analysed in terms of the development of mechanisms for New Local Governance and New Public Management (NPM). Using Spanish municipalities as a case study, this paper develops an analytical tool for the analysis of this model of urban intervention within the European context, paying close attention to the development of mechanisms for New Local Governance from a multilevel perspective, as well as the development of mechanisms for NPM.     

Municipal Mergers in New Zealand: An Empirical Analysis of the Proposed Amalgamation of Hawke’s Bay Councils

Local government policymakers across the developed world have frequently employed municipal amalgamation to improve the operation of local councils, and New Zealand is no exception. This paper empirically examines claims made in Potential Costs and Savings of Local Government Reform in Hawke’s Bay that the merger of the five local authorities in the Hawke’s Bay Region of New Zealand would generate significant cost-savings. We empirically test for the existence of scale economies in a single merged Hawke’s Bay council and find that no cost-savings can be expected. This removes a key argument for a forced Hawke’s Bay amalgamation.     

Lev Gumilev and the European New Right

The striking affinities that have developed between radical-conservative movements in Western Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold War have been widely noted. This essay considers these affinities through the example of the Soviet historian and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992). It argues that Gumilev and the European New Right developed perspectives that were highly comparable, founded on similar principles, and articulated through similar images and allusions. Yet despite the powerful resonances in terms of basic concepts and theoretical orientation, there were nonetheless deep differences in terms of the conclusions regarding the practical implications for their respective societies that Gumilev and the Europeans deduced from these principles.     

社会主义新农村建设中的社会治安问题研究之一和谐社会建设中的新农村道德建设

和谐社会建设中的新农村建设首先是道德建设。要进行新农村的道德建设,就必须对我国的传统道德进行有效的梳理。国家在对农村进行物质文明建设的同时,更要加大精神文明建设的力度,真正实现自然、人和人类社会的共同、健康的发展。加强新农村的道德建设对传承我国延续几千年的道德文明,摒弃落后的、不健康的东西,重构社会主义的新型道德价值观,稳定社会治安意义重大。     

新精神活性物质检验鉴定面临的挑战和对策

新精神活性物质更新快,种类繁多,缺乏国际条约的监管,列入联合国管控目录困难,加之一些国家和国际社会对大麻等毒品管控降低,给我国在新精神活性物质类毒品的监管带来困难.具有成瘾性和社会危害性的新精神活性物质才能成为列管对象,毒物分析技术人员在列管程序中扮演极为重要的角色.我国对新精神活性物质的监管法规规定了相关列管程序,毒...