Are the LDCs really the world’s least developed countries?

The term ‘the least developed countries’ (LDCs) is widely understood to designate, exactly as stated, the world’s least developed countries. In conjunction with the 2015 United Nations (UN) triennial review of the LDC category, this article attempts to critically evaluate the UN’s list of LDC countries in the light of various indicators – economic, social, political, military and security related, and psychological. It concludes that the official and actual lists of LDCs, despite important similarities, are not completely identical. The term ‘the LDCs’ as used by the UN is therefore not fully consistent with the reality it attempts to designate and describe.     

The social–economic impact of shale gas extraction: a global perspective

This article explores the global social–economic impact of shale gas extraction, comparing the differing social and economic impacts shale gas extraction may have on communities in developed and developing countries. It argues that the benefits of fracking are more likely to be enjoyed by communities in highly and very highly developed countries rather than by those in countries with low or medium levels of development . Additionally, it shows that the potential risks and drawbacks of shale gas and its extraction are more likely to be experienced by communities in these latter countries than by those in highly or very highly developed countries. However, it also demonstrates that even communities in developed countries are vulnerable to environmental and health risks associated with shale gas extraction.     

Subsidized Housing and Residential Trajectories: An Application of Matched Sequence Analysis

Scholars have long debated the relative merits of site-based, subsidized housing owned and operated by a public entity or by the private sector. This is the first study to classify long-term residential trajectories of nationally representative low-income households in the United States by their initial assisted housing status. We employ a matched sequence analysis of neighborhood poverty and racial trajectories of low-income households in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics who formed during 1988–1992. Among households carefully matched by their demographic and economic attributes, we find that those first forming households in public housing spend much longer durations over the subsequent 20 years in poorer, minority dominant neighborhoods than similar households first forming in market-rate housing do. In contrast, forming a household in private site-based subsidized housing is associated with superior neighborhood socioeconomic (but not desegregated racial composition) trajectories compared with starting in market-rate housing. Implications for housing policy are discussed.     

驻村“第一书记”扶贫长效机制研究综述

自2015年全面选派“第一书记”驻村扶贫以来,“第一书记”是活跃在精准扶贫工作中的主要力量,在加强基层组织、助力精准扶贫、推动精准脱贫、提升治理水平等方面成效显著。建立“第一书记”扶贫长效机制事关贫困地区脱贫目标的精准实现,事关全面建成小康社会总体目标的最终完成。因此,全面分析并掌握驻村“第一书记”的概念和相关政策,从选派驻村“第一书记”主体角度和制度角度梳理学界有关“第一书记”扶贫长效机制的动态,并在此基础上分析其存在的不足,就未来研究角度进行展望,具有非常重要的价值。     

Families in multi-problem situations: Backgrounds,characteristics, and care services

The article reviews practical experiences and theoretical reflections from the Dutch child and youth care sector on the provision of care for families with multiple problems. Emphasis is laid upon the complex relations between socioeconomic and psychosocial problems, and subsequent issues that may arise in arranging child and youth care. Furthermore, the current state of discussion in program development for the target group in the Netherlands is introduced. The originally English concept of families with multiple problems has been used only modestly in German-speaking countries. This is remarkable from an international perspective, especially considering the re-emerging prominence of social policies that define families as a site of social work practice in English-speaking countries. We conclude that the themes, as derived from our review open up possibilities for further international comparisons, and can provide valuable reference for the transnational discourse about child and youth care services for families with multiple problems.     

Recycling and expansion: an analysis of the World Bank agenda (1989–2014)

This article analyses the agenda of the World Bank after the Washington Consensus, arguing that it became more encompassing, politicised and intrusive. This agenda expanded and recycled itself since, in addition to liberalisation, privatisation and macroeconomic adjustment, it also advocated the wide-ranging reconstruction of the economy, the relationship between society and nature, the state, civil society and visions of the world and social practices from a neoliberal perspective. It is argued that the fight against poverty was incorporated by the institution, which functioned as an auxiliary mechanism for this liberalisation. The importance of the incorporation of New Institutional Economics for this expansion and recycling is highlighted.     

Fragile states and the evolution of risk governance: intervention,prevention and extension

Following the plane crashes into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, Ulrich Beck claimed that the West would need to pursue ‘border-transcending new beginnings’ towards a more cosmopolitan world. Rather than any radical transformation along cosmopolitan lines, however, this paper maps a process of incremental reform and policy bricolage, where the post-cold war politics of intervention, and the securitisation of development, have been extended to encompass international terrorism in three overlapping phases. Although these overlapping phases – intervention, prevention and extension – are reflexive moments, they constitute a strengthening of the prevailing rationalities and technologies of risk rather than a radical rupture.     

Seeing like an indigenous community: the World Bank's Agriculture for Development Report read from the perspective of postwar rural Guatemala

This paper uses the case of a rural indigenous village in the war torn highlands of Guatemala to question the framework for using ‘agriculture for development’ put forth by the World Bank in its 2008 World Development Report. There is a significant gap between the Bank's sanguine vision of recent developments in Guatemala and the limited options available to indigenous rural agrarian producers. This gap stems from critical lacunae in the Report's framework, namely, its neglect of the non-economic forces that structure agrarian poverty, and its neglect of history.     

Peasants and the redshirt movement in Thailand: some dissenting voices

The ‘redshirt’ movement in Thailand is commonly portrayed in media and scholarly accounts as a class-based, pro-Thaksin social movement that draws fervent support from the poor rural-born masses, especially peasants, in the north and northeast. The movement leaders, including Thaksin, have supposedly won these people's support by framing urban-based political elites as ammart (aristocrats) who have stakes in suppressing the needs of phrai (serfs) – a contrasting label for the rural-born poor. I question this analysis that highlights the polarisation of Thai society along class lines. Combining data from election results and fieldwork in Chiang Mai Province – Thaksin's birthplace and the putative redshirt heartland – I show that despite their relative poverty, some peasants remain cynical opponents of the redshirt movement. They have autonomy to penetrate and reinterpret the redshirts' class-centric collective action frame – a fact that cautions us against linking rural poverty causally to rural support for redshirts. Peasants are a more diverse, politically divided lot than we are led to believe.     

Economic mobility trajectories of the Russian population： The experience of the last two decades

This paper is to study the economic mobility trajectories of the Russian population in the last two decades, each of which has brought about both negative shocks and broadening of the opportunity horizons for people＇s economic advancement. The information base of the research is provided by the data of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey （RLMS） for the period of 1994-2008. The investigated period Russia clearly falls into two sub-periods-the 1990s and the 2000s： The first one is characterized by sharp shifts towards impoverishment of the population and growth of economic inequality; the second one-by considerable masses of people overcoming poverty with a still high level of economic inequality. The results indicate the following The proportion of the adult population who have been chronically poor during the whole contemporary history of Russia proves to be twice as little as the proportion of those who have been “chronically non-poor”. However, both groups in total have not constituted the majority, since the majority have been migrating between the extremes of persistent well-being and ill-being during this period with the stream of those coming out of poverty prevailing in numbers.