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This paper examines the benefits of conceptualizing social movements and collective action as complex adaptive systems (CAS), in particular for movements in developing countries (based upon Latin America). The interactions among identities and decisions are fundamental to understanding participation in these social movements, where global inequalities shape participation. By utilizing preliminary results of a CAS computer simulation that relaxes rational choice assumptions and incorporates multiple identities into agents? decision-making, it is argued that the intricacies of social movement dynamics are better explained. The paper has two goals: to examine the behavior assumptions made in collective action, resource mobilization, and new social movement theories and to better understand under which circumstances identities effect participation dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the international community?s response to HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper begins with an exploration of the political and epidemiological dimensions of the crisis. It then outlines the main parameters of an ?organisational template? elaborated and imposed on developing countries by the World Bank, UNAIDS and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The template is evaluated based on an assessment of its implementation and focusing on key political issues, including the role of state leadership in organising a multisectoral response and in mobilising religious and associational sectors. The author argues that the organisational template misinterprets the experience of countries that have achieved some success in fighting the virus, and that it is overly influenced by the ?post-Washington consensus?, which brings together neoliberal prescriptions with prescriptions promoting popular participation and the defence of human rights. The AIDS crisis provides new opportunities for reviving public health sectors and creating an ethos of public service within the public sector and the medical profession, but also forces policy-makers to confront difficult trade offs between individual rights and the public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widely held argument that civic engagement and political participation reinforce each other, which remains to be empirically vindicated, especially in the context of developing societies. Using survey data from Kathmandu, this paper examines the structural relationships between civic engagement, electoral participation, and other forms of political participation and finds that civic engagement contributes to other forms of political participation, which in turn affects electoral participation. In process, this paper identifies the extent of civic engagement, electoral participation, and other forms of political participation and their characteristics, with important policy implications on maximizing electoral participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proceeds from the conviction that many of the interesting problems encountered in the developing world require not the construction of uniform models based on universalistic assumptions but the systematic examination of variation in the evolution, organization, and interconnectedness of the formal and informal structures within specific institutions. For anyone seeking to critically examine the interaction between local histories and the supposedly homogenizing forces identified with modernization or globalization, a central problem relates to how elements of preeexisting social institutions are reconstructed as informal structures in newer institutional settings and how these structures, in turn, affect the coherence, efficacy and sustainability of the new institutions. Therein lies the value of analytic constructs such as Goran Hyden’s typology of informally institutionalized economies of affection, which distinguishes between clientelism, pooling, charisma, and self-defense. Although emerging in the context of African political economy, the logic behind this typology can be extended to understand more generally how preexisting economies of affection differ from one another, and how these differences partially explain the design and performance of new institutions. This paper compares Japanese and Russian peasant communities, the mura and the mir, to identify portable norms and principles that can govern the distribution of tasks, rewards, and authority in different institutions of production. While both the mura and the mir were physically dispersed (the mura as a result of land reform under the Allied Occupation, the mir as a result of Stalinist collectivization), the norms and practices once embedded in these institutions would bear a marked resemblance to the informal expectations and understandings of those who entered new systems of work and authority characterized by new tasks, technologies, and administrative structures. This suggests that the distinctive legacies of preexisting economies of affection deserve attention as a crucial component of any inquiry into how formally similar institutional practices can function quite differently and elicit quite different responses in diverse social environments. More generally, the study points to the value of a comparative-historical approach that explicitly aims to aggregate and utilize the extensive scholarship on different regions of the world as a corrective to both overly abstract universal models and area-specific empirical analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing controversy over the constraint, inspiration or irrelevance of globalization for organized labor has said little about how threat of exit and competition may have effects distinct from actual flows, and how different faces of trade and investment globalization may have varying effects for different faces of labor organization. This paper addresses these silences. It argues that trade and investment openness towards less-developed countries (LDCs) is likely to yield more constraint on union organization, power and bargaining than openness towards OECD economies. It also argues that openness is likely to affect works councils much differently than unions, and that LDC openness may in many cases be less of a threat to works council bargaining power than intra-OECD openness. Finally, the paper argues that the exit options or “openness” to investment and trade may have stronger effects on labor power and organization than flows alone, and considers how “exit” and “voice” interact in labor relations. The empirical development and testing of these claims combines quantitative and qualitative study of globalization and labor organization. The first is study of how openness as well as flows, OECD as well as LDC trade and investment, affect union density in 16 countries between 1961 and 1997. The second qualitatively studies how FDI openness affects the works council bargaining over issues of work time, payment system and non-standard employees for eight plants in Germany, capturing variation in skill-level, product profile and levels and kinds of outward FDI and other openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past 30 years, the number of NGOs in both industrialized and developing countries has grown dramatically. This paper examines how international political structures and norms have encouraged this growth in two possible ways by: (1) providing societal actors clear structural incentives to organize and (2) reshaping the domestic political conditions they face. First, the paper shows how changes in the international political opportunity structure in the past 30 years in the form of new international funding sources and expanded NGO access to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have both directly and indirectly supported NGO growth worldwide. Next, the paper explores the normative dimension of these changes and examines the ways in which IGOs and their programs emphasizing "people participation," "civil society" and good governance have also altered domestic political conditions and made them more favorable for NGOs. The paper concludes with some observations on the symbiotic nature of IGO-NGO relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While developing countries have undergone a remarkable transformation in their attitudes toward FDI during the past decade, they still resist the establishment of a multilateral regime governing FDI. This is puzzling, first, because these states are liberalizing their policies anyway, and second, because a multilateral regime offers several advantages over the patchwork of unilateral and bilateral arrangements that currently exist. Most notably, such a regime could contribute to increasing FDI flows into developing countries. Some have pointed to concerns over losing sovereignty, to lack of knowledge concerning the costs of FDI restrictions, or to lingering suspicions of multinational corporations. None of these explanations is particularly convincing. In this paper, I discuss some of the attempts to establish an FDI regime (e.g. the Uruguay Round negotiations over trade related investment measures, the aborted OECD multilateral agreement on investment, increasingly widespread bilateral investment treaties, etc.). To explain the attitude of developing states, the paper looks at two other hypotheses. First, it examines the domestic politics of incoming FDI - which groups should support or oppose a liberalizing regime. The pattern of variation among LDCs in their attitudes toward a multilateral regime suggests this approach may not be sufficient. Second, the paper puts forth an argument that focuses on differences in bargaining power among different LDCs; that is, host states with the ability to strike better bargains both with firms and with developed states are more reluctant to support a multilateral regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IMF lending in Africa has not achieved dramatic results; indeed, Africa remains as poor and as poorly governed as it was thirty years ago. Why? I hypothesize that the IMF’s conditionality lacks credibility because its lending in Africa is politicized. This paper analyzes data on 53 African countries for 1990-2000. African countries that are able to draw on influence with developed patrons suffer shorter interruptions of their programs. IMF lending depends on U.S. foreign aid, membership in post-colonial international institutions, and the similarity in voting in the UN General Assembly between a borrowing country and France. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policy-makers alike have long assumed that trade and finance liberalization encourages developing countries to become more democratic; yet no one has tried to test this hypothesis across aggregate data. This paper shows that these two trends are indeed related, but not in the positive manner that has commonly been postulated. I argue that increasing exposure to international export markets induces improvements in democracy if safety nets are used as a strategy for providing stability and building political support. Foreign private investment, on the other hand, does not encourage democratization, regardless of whether or not safety nets are in place. Ultimately, private investors? aversion to fiscal expansionism overrides their inclinations to invest in fragile democracies. This paper presents a model that depicts the political process that simultaneously determines why political leaders may allow improvements in political liberties as trade increases, but not necessarily as capital flows increase. Empirical evidence to support this claim is provided by econometric analysis covering 59 developing countries for the time period from 1972- 1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Making governments accountable is one of the hottest issues in assessing the quality of democracy in both advanced and developing countries. Following Przeworski et al. (1999), the paper defines accountability as a mechanism in which incumbent governments are reelected when they conduct good politics but lose office when they do not conduct good politics. One problem is that the incumbents can be reelected even if they do not conduct good politics. The paper examines this problem. It hypothesizes why relevant office alternations do not occur, conducts cross-national statistical analyses, and then empirically examines several cases of selected OECD countries from the postwar era to the present. Two independent variables will be examined: (1) whether production regimes have strong or weak market coordination (Soskice, 1999), and (2) whether party systems contain sharp or moderate polarization. Political economies of advanced societies will be categorized into four groups according to the above variables. My hypothesis is that incumbent governments can be unaccountable when they have strongly coordinated market economies combined with strong party polarization because under such conditions the incumbents may well become ?gThe only game in town?h with regard to economic growth, making voters lose any other alternative. The lack of office alternation leads to electoral stalemates on the part of voters in general and eventually reveals limits of electoral democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both global economic inequality and poverty are growing problems, despite decades of development efforts directed at less developed countries. The paper looks at some of the most basic assumptions of the prevailing (neoclassical) development economics of the period, asking whether some of the failure can be attributed to misconceptions at that level, as they translate into practice in policies of IFIs such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Engaging recent works by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Brooke Ackerly, which look at development as the increase of human well-being--including freedom and functioning--and take seriously the perspectives of the world’s economically least well-off, particularly poor women, the paper also turns to more direct evidence of how those living in severe poverty see their situation and articulate their needs. Such evidence, collected during both preparations for the Fourth World Women’s Conference, 1995, and in the World Bank’s recent study, Voices of the Poor, suggests the need to re-evaluate the ways in which the problem of world poverty has been approached, such that both gender and the voices of the poor themselves are kept in the forefront of discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benefit sharing, embodied in international agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol (NP), emerged as a counter to the extension of intellectual property rights in developing countries, and has been hailed as a significant step to promote development. This study focuses on benefit sharing in order to compare development strategies in different regional contexts. Contrary to the view that countries base their development strategy on one framework, this paper points out that in implementing specific policies, nations employ various approaches to development. Comparing benefit sharing policies in three nations at various levels of economic development, India, Nepal and Norway, this study points out that diverse approaches have implications beyond national borders. Benefit sharing establishes legal mechanisms to ensure that firms accessing genetic resources do so only with the consent of, and with due compensation to, traditional communities or knowledge holders. In what ways do countries apply market-based or rights based development approaches to frame benefit sharing laws? What implications do these different frameworks have for the implementation of benefit sharing regimes? This study points out that the deviations in approaches have cross-regional implications and that coordination between nations is required to implement benefit sharing and development strategies effectively. The paper is based on a project focusing on access and benefit sharing currently being conducted in collaboration with researchers in India, Nepal and Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital revolution has led to significant advances in the application of field-based research methods, including the use of Web-based tools to design and administer surveys and analyze survey data. Web-based surveys are particularly appealing because other modes of survey administration, such telephone questionnaires or in-person interviews, are costly and can result in several types of biases. While Web-based surveys can help eliminate some of these biases, they also pose significant problems in terms of response rates, data security, and privacy. These issues are exacerbated by the challenges associated with different settings and populations, such as surveys of government elites in developing countries that ask for candid opinions of politically sensitive programs. In such scenarios, there is a potential trade-off between cost and response rate, and biases and security/privacy concerns. This paper will examine these trade-offs, and the opportunities and challenges posed in administering Web-based surveys to developing-country elites in the context of evaluating the performance of international aid programs. Drawing on existing literature on the comparative effectiveness of different modes of survey administration, the paper will begin with a discussion of the key benefits and drawbacks of in-person (and to a lesser degree, paper-based and telephone) surveys versus Web-based surveys. It will then analyze these trade-offs in the context of administering a survey to law enforcement officials as part of an evaluation analyzing the effectiveness of U.S. government assistance to Caribbean nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) on the poor and marginalized has been a matter of debate since the beginnings of the information revolution. Whether or not ICT penetration is causing increased inequality and poverty remains an unresolved puzzle (ICTs, defined broadly in this paper, include TV, radio, Internet and mobile phones). The puzzle stems from small-n studies tending to find that the impact of new ICTs has been positive for the poor, while large-n studies purport the opposite (Forestier, Grace and Kenny 2001). Recent empirical studies suggest the impact of ICT is 'Janus faced'-in some cases emergent ICTs create new opportunities for the poor, while in others they seem to exacerbate the challenges the poor face (Kenny 2006; Huerta, Esperanza and Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan 2007; Hanson 2008). I argue that the socioeconomic context, and governance, shapes the impact of these emerging technologies. I posit that there is an interaction effect between governance and ICT which is the 'missing link' that plays a central, yet often overlooked, role in determining the impact of ICT on the poor. There are three primary mechanisms influencing how ICT and governance interact: First, ICT affects governance by enhancing opportunities for information sharing through increasing speed of communication, increasing penetration rates, and deepening of technology (Web 2.0); Secondly, ICT affects governance by generating social capital and enhancing civil society; Third, ICT affects governance by improving efficiency. Finally, I make the theoretical leap, digressing from the established literature, that this produces an interaction effect between ICT and governance leading, in general, to better outcomes for the poor. To empirically test these claims, this paper takes a mixed methods approach. First, I conduct a large-n study comparing Mexico to other similar developing countries. Yet to investigate the puzzle in greater depth, I also employ a small-n analysis focusing on the poor in rural and urban Mexico. I compare case studies of ICT access and use by the poor in two urban areas, Guadalajara, Mexico's so-called 'Silicone Vally', and Puebla. Comparative analysis between two rural towns in Oaxaca, confirm the findings of the urban case studies: ICT access and use among the poor can be enhanced through an interaction with governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backed by a range of studies finding only limited propensity for free-riding when communities have an interest in self provision, the last few decades have seen a surge of interest in community based development. A major caveat to the 'second wave' of collective action studies, however, is that collective action often breaks down under hierarchical social relationships. This is unfortunate news for developing countries' rural societies which are often entrenched in patron-client networks. Using a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway, the paper finds that clientelist relationships do not, in and by itself, block peasant collective action. Rather, it is the interaction between clientelism and isolation that empower patrons to block community based projects. Peasants in connected villages face no such constraints, instead they are found to rely on their patrons' assistance in collective projects, making the hierarchical network an added resource to rely upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some countries have constitutional environmental rights while others do not? In this paper I conduct statistical analyses to respond to this inquiry. Through studying the impact of intraregional constitutional design, I aim to understand why states adopt environmental rights. I argue that regional isomorphism-that is, the tendency among states within a region to converge on certain policies-may explain the trend toward constitutionalization of environmental rights. In this paper I (1) define and provide historical background on environmental rights; (2) describe theories which support regional isomorphism as a means of explaining the adoption of constitutional environmental rights; and (3) conduct statistical tests to determine the validity of the regional isomorphism thesis. I find that the enactment of constitutional environmental rights within a region does not increase the likelihood that another state within the same region will include environmental rights within its constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An observed tendency in the study of market and regulatory reforms in the developing countries is to reproduce a dichotomy between the economic rationality of the market and political irrationality of the policy-makers who constantly reverse the reform processes, which are likely to undermine their support base. Such perspectives do neglect diverse achievements of politicians apart from their failures and do not grasp how reform processes created new conflicts and unintended consequences, which cannot be evaluated by using a pre-determined, ideal typical concept of neoliberal reform. In fact, the source of reforms, their differential implementation and actual effects are very complex phenomena, which cannot be reduced to monocausal simplistic analysis. Three decades of neoliberal reforms enable a limited but still possible longitudinal analysis than it was the case before. Rather than deducing explanations from the essentialist assumptions about politicians' behaviours, research should focus on deeper historical inquiry into single cases towards comparative historical induction, before reaching new generalizations. This paper contributes to such an effort and proposes to examine the complex internal evolution and historical trajectory of neoliberal reforms in Turkey as a key to understand types of resistance and conflicts with respect to current regulatory reforms.The paper gives a brief overview of the political economy of market reforms since the beginning of the 1980s. It argues that the specific implementation of market reforms in Turkey created a set of vested interests in specific ad-hoc institutional configurations. Rather than eliminating the old structures, the government set up ad-hoc and parallel institutions, which created their own interests but did not attempt at drastic regulatory reform. Only in the aftermath of 1999 financial crisis the government had to establish, under the supervision of the World Bank and IMF, a set of politically insulated independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in different sectors to regulate the markets. However, the practical implementation and effects of those institutional changes became a conflict-ridden process between the government, private interests and international agencies so that the actual outcome of regulatory reform in different sectors became contingent on bargaining between those actors. Since it is difficult to assess the actual consequences of the regulatory reform, which is still an ongoing process, the paper focuses on the negotiations during the practical implementation of new laws and rules, which established those new institutions in the Turkish administrative structure. The main argument of the paper is that the conflicts between different actors and struggles over the form and content of regulatory reform have their roots in the earlier market reforms: The interests vested in the institutional structures of the 1980s and 1990s started blocking or re-shaping, if not fully reversing, the type of institutional change formulated by the World Bank and IMF. Therefore none of the reforms were implemented in their pure and ideal forms. In that sense, the paper can be also read as an attempt to answer the broader question of how a complex institutional configuration reacts to new organizations and rules, which aim at altering its initial coordinates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty-two years as more developing countries have lowered trade barriers and liberalized their economies, they have experienced a rising number of import surges, primarily in food commodities. The rapid, dramatic increase in the importation of specific food commodities has potentially negative effects on domestic markets and food producers. This paper explores how governments have differed in their response to food commodity import surges. It examines the case of poultry import surges in West Africa. Since 1984, developing countries have experienced close to 700 cases of poultry import surges, a rapid rise in the importation of frozen chicken legs and thighs. Fifty percent of these surges have occurred in Africa, and twenty five percent in West Africa. Poultry surges have dramatically undermined domestic poultry production. As a result, domestic producers have demanded that their governments respond with stricter trade policies. This study employs data gathered from newspaper coverage, policy papers and a small number of interviews with poultry producers and experts in Senegal to investigate how the Cameroonian, Senegalese and Ghanaian governments have responded to the flood of poultry imports between 1999 and 2008 and consequent producer demands. The main finding of the paper is that producer associations' strategies, particularly whether they work first to change consumer opinions before focusing on political lobbying, and the degree of trade dependence of in a country are the primary determinants of how a government will respond to demands for stricter trade policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about foreign direct investment (FDI) competition in developing nations is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the efforts by Vietnam to regulate subnational incentives, foreign investments in Vietnam, and Vietnam's regionally differentiated investment incentives.

The complexity of the issues in climate change and trade presents challenges not faced by other global problems. This paper examines the problem from the perspective of trade officials. It begins with a brief review of some of the overlapping challenges faced by trade policy specialists in the WTO and climate change negotiators. It then turns attention to the basic problems of definitions, particularly those arising from the classification of environmental goods and services (EGS). Ultimately, despite the amount of time spent thus far on thinking about tariff reductions in goods, non tariff barriers like standards and labeling laws may make a bigger contribution to the use or non use of environmental friendly products. Finally, the paper considers some of the issues stemming from border adjustment measures, especially from the perspective of developing states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical framework for the comparative study of the causes and effects of pursuing rights through legal strategies. It then tests that framework on the results of a two-year, five-country empirical analysis of the determinants and impact of judicial interventions in health and education policy. The data gathering effort was carried out by in-country teams of up to five people in each country, using both archival research to build a database of judicial decisions and interviews to explore the implementation and impact of these judicial decisions. The paper first presents extensive original data on the nature and extent of economic and social (ES) rights litigation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa. It then presents comparative data suggesting the conditions that promote the extensive and successful use of legal strategies. Finally, the paper presents preliminary findings on the direct effects of a law-based strategy, as well as the indirect, aggregate social policy impact of the widespread use of legal approaches to extending ES rights. We argue that three elements combine to produce a wave of judicial demands: a) demand side factors (social organization and resources to pursue a legal strategy) must coincide with b) supply side factors (judicial support and a credible judicial system), in c) a policy context that is propitious for judicial intervention because it is prone to policy-making or bureaucratic failures. We further argue that, with significant exceptions, the direct effects of judicial strategies tends to reinforce redistributive inequities, but the indirect effect often extends the benefits far beyond the initial claimants, with positive, equity-enhancing results.The five countries were chosen so as to include common law countries with aggressive ES rights litigation (India, South Africa) and weak or incipient ES rights litigation (Nigeria), and civil law countries with aggressive (Brazil) and weak (Indonesia) litigation. Similarly, two specific issue areas have been selected for analysis in order to provide within-country variation in the effectiveness of litigation as a means of enforcement: although the findings will, we believe, generalize to the entire range of ES rights, the empirical sections will emphasize the rights to health care and education. A key element in the project is the creation of a cross-nationally comparable database detailing the characteristics and outcomes of ES rights court cases (number of cases, likelihood that plaintiffs succeed, individual or collective action, level of court), and an investigation of impact on the ground in a random sample of up to 100 cases in each country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the politics of banking reform in developing countries during the 1990s. Electoral competition helps to explain whether countries were likely to implement regulatory reforms after banking crises. The potential for wide swings in electoral support in highly competitive democracies should favor consumers, who benefit from reforms, and harm vested producer groups that prefer forbearance. Where electoral competition is muted, producer groups - such as a bankers' coalition - should benefit more than consumers given their economic and political power. To evaluate these arguments, this paper examines patterns of post-crisis regulatory reform implementation in Mexico, Venezuela, and South Korea during the 1990s. Within and cross-country evidence is consistent with the arguments. Surprisingly, it indicates that in countries with low levels of intra-party electoral competition, i.e. those with disciplined political parties, governments engaged in regulatory forbearance even with fierce inter-party competition. Crony financial capitalism seems less likely in multiparty settings with undisciplined parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to find an adequate moral reason why the rich in rich countries should help the poor in poor countries. Many scholars have denied the existence of such a transnational obligation. Criticizing this perspective which I call the "parochial" perspective, this paper will reveal the morality of transnational aid. This paper begins with a critical review of parochial arguments (including neo-Malthusian argument, local-responsibility argument, Realpolitik argument, libertarian argument, communitarian argument, and self-interest argument) and moves to the examination of cosmopolitan arguments (including consequentialist argument, compensation argument, entitlement argument, human rights argument, Kantian argument, and Pogge's negative responsibility argument). This paper then concludes that, of various cosmopolitan arguments, Pogge's negative responsibility argument can provide a more adequate moral ground for transnational obligation. Revealing the morality of transnational aid, this paper reminds us that we should do something to relieve global poverty and hunger. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of international pressure in bringing about social policy reforms in developing countries assumes such influence can be found at the nexus of international organizations (e.g., the World Bank and the IMF) and central governments. With its focus on international organizations and the policy models they promote, this explanatory model underemphasizes the role of foreign investment and trade in shaping domestic social policy outcomes. This paper uses China's experience with pension reforms in the 1990s to propose an alternative model that incorporates local-level actors such as governments and firms and their interaction with global economic forces as a key variable in the making of national social policy. This paper shows how China's pension-dominant welfare regime emerged from the manner in which local governments, which are responsible for social welfare expenditures, have sought to attract foreign investment, promote exports by local firms, and shed uncompetitive state firms. China's pension reforms were thus a product of ad hoc local initiatives to "internationalize," rather than a coherent policy decision taken by the central government with the advice of international institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the ongoing interaction of the system and state levels of analysis by examining politics inherent in issuing equity financial products and their connection to control of the firm in developing and transition states. Taking the price mechanism in corporate governance to be a key indicator of financial institutional structure, the paper argues that specific, negotiated features of financial products can shield some firms from it. Depending on the size and broader composition of the market where it is offered, combinations of ownership structures, conditioned by these firms' historical experiences, undercut broader financial institutional convergence at either the national or international level. I argue instead for analyses that are firm-based in order to uncover the political dimensions associated with control when the system and state change simultaneously. Evidence is drawn from an analysis of four case studies chosen from the twenty largest emerging market firms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the interaction between economic crises and ideology in the politics of IMF program initiation and implementation in two recent episodes of economic reforms in the developing world: Latin America during the 1980s and the countries of the former Soviet Bloc in the 1990s.The first section introduces a theoretical framework for studying the interaction between "objective" economic crisis conditions and domestic political interests as drivers of economic reforms. The second part of the paper discusses the domestic and international roots of the economic crises experienced by the countries of the two regions, and uses a combination of cross-country statistical evidence and case study illustrations to identify the political constellations under which countries implemented or avoided neoliberal market reforms in the face of varying degrees of economic pressures.The paper finds that in political environments in which key actors disagree about the proper interpretation of the roots of the economic crisis - as happened most clearly with respect to inflation and interest payments during the Latin American debt crisis - economic crises trigger policy divergence for governments of different ideological orientations. By contrast, in situations where the nature of the economic crisis does not lend itself as easily to different ideological interpretations - as was the case for liquidity crises in both regions and for inflation in Eastern Europe - governments of different ideological stripes are likely to set aside their differences in crisis situations in order to tackle the economic adjustment tasks required by the crisis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to explain why overvalued currencies are so common in developing countries. Overvaluation is a puzzling outcome: it contradicts the common assumption that states want to maximize net exports; and it has harmful economic effects, such as low growth and financial crises. The sectoral logrolling theory developed in the paper argues that overvaluation is common because pivotal actors benefit from the side-effects of overvaluation, such as currency stability and high government spending. Logrolling creates support for overvaluation among actors that care little about currency valuation. By contrast, the pro-undervaluation coalition cannot succeed politically because they lack the resources to attract supporters. The theory predicts that undervaluation is likely only when advocates of undervaluation are politically influential and formal political institutions prevent logrolling from taking place. I also hypothesize that political institutions affect the extent to which overvaluation coincides with fixed exchange rates. The statistical tests, based on a panel data set of developing countries, support these hypotheses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CULTURE OR COMMERCE? A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF INTERNATIONAL INTERACTIONS AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AT UNESCO, WTO AND BEYONDABSTRACTDoes international trade in cultural products threaten cultural diversity in the developing world? This paper seeks to question the implied correlation by exploring the intellectual and empirical bases of the claims. Conceptually, I argue that cultural diversity viewed from the perspective of the nation-state is problematic. Politically, of course, nation-states, make this claim themselves in protecting their self-interest globally. Empirically, this paper shows that nation-states at the forefront of the movement protecting cultural diversity are, in fact, top exporters of cultural products, something that is not apparent in the mercantilist position taken by these states with respect to international trade in cultural products. The paper then explores the position of developing countries explicitly taking advantage of globalization of culture to promote both their cultural distinctiveness as well as their exports. These 'cultural voices', I conclude, are growing economically and socially and cannot be dismissed as playing second fiddle to those from the developed world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important question for developing countries is whether labor unions help or hinder economic development. What little has been written on the relationship between union behavior and economic development in South Asia a) fails to distinguish between unions affiliated to major parties (politically incorporated unions) and unincorporated unions and b) fails to grasp the importance of extreme and violent protest behavior for economic outcomes. This paper aims to overcome these deficits by examining how violent forms of protest affect economic development and by providing a political explanation of why some unions resort to militant protest behavior instead of relying on moderate levels of routine protest and institutionalized forms of grievance resolution to pursue their demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIDS is a devastating problem for many developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia. Globally, over 40 million people have been diagnosed as HIV positive. Despite the numerous studies and reports on deaths due to AIDS, its epidemiological features, and its relationship to poverty and development, few studies to date have systematically analyzed how political factors and policies may help curtail the spread of AIDS. In this paper, we consider how a variety of domestic factors influence HIV infection rates across countries. We argue that states with higher state capacity tend to slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS epidemic. Moreover, we argue that democracies tend to be more responsive to the needs of the population and can be more efficient in curtailing the spread of HIV/AIDS. We empirically evaluate our hypotheses using a cross-sectional times series sample of 117 countries. Although preliminary, our empirical results indicate that state capacity is related to levels of HIV/AIDS infection rates. There is also evidence that democracy and HIV/AIDS infection rates have a reversed U-curve relationship. More systematic research, linking infectious diseases with political variables is required to understand the impact of epidemics on state?s ability to govern and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on democratization is vast. The majority of recent new democracies are developing countries, as are almost all remaining dictatorships. And a large proportion of government activities in developing countries is financed by official aid. Despite these three facts, there is surprisingly little analysis of aid?s impact on democratization. This paper uses recent work on the relationship between redistribution and democratization (particularly by Acemoglu and Robinson) to incorporate aid into theories of democratization and make predictions about its effects. The model shows that aid?unconditional and, to an even greater extent, conditional?is likely to diminish both the chances for democratization and the chances in nondemocracies for policy improvement (from the perspective of the poor). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mega-cities of the developing world, environmental regulation has often been presumed to operate in a radically different context than in the developed world. The well-known hypothesis of the environmental Kuznets curve specifies that environmental problems and their solution in developed world cities will follow a similar path of worsening with intensive industrialization and urbanization, and will only improve with the generation of local wealth. The analysis of this paper shows that not only levels of development, but a host of other political, ecological, temporal and economic factors influence systematically influence local regulatory activities and outcomes. Our analysis derives from primary and secondary research as well as statistical indicators for 32 of the biggest urban regions in 18 countries around the Pacific Rim. Comparative historical analysis shows that adoption of national pollution standards has taken place in cross-national waves that extend to the developing as well as well as the developed world. Although foreign-led investment in industrial development has often contributed to worse pollution, vehicles have increasing replaced factories as the main sources of urban pollution around the world. In developing and newly industrialized countries, the economic interests of urban service industries in environmental quality and the political position of capital cities have fostered intensified efforts toward regulation. Democratization has sometimes contributed to this process, but often more at the local than at the national level. These influences highlight the need to move beyond the Kuznets curve toward a transnational political economy of environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade information and communication technology (ICT) has been increasingly promoted as the new key to economic and social development. Nonetheless, the opportunities for development and the outcomes of ICT initiatives depend in large measure on the domestic policy frameworks which influence investment in these technologies. In this paper I argue that the character of domestic policies, specifically ICT regulation and investment policies, is in turn the result of an interaction of key international and domestic level factors. Through an evaluation of international regulation, international investment and international norms, on the one hand, and domestic institutions, political coalitions and public opinion on the other, I find that the character of domestic political institutions plays a particularly important role in producing unique policy outcomes at the national level. I use the cases of South Africa and India to demonstrate this interaction of variables and show that regulation is driven by international regulations and norms interacting with domestic political coalitions in centralized institutions. ICT investment, however, is more often shaped at the sub-national level, as decentralized political structures mediate between international forces and state or provincial actors. This analysis of the ways in which domestic and international factors interact to affect ICT outcomes in developing countries serves as a starting point for further investigation into the causes of policy variation across and within countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I draw attention to how broad changes in the global political economy affect responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developing world. I argue that stable access to affordable medicines is essential for developing countries to tackle HIV/AIDS epidemics. Developing countries must overcome the ?price-infrastructure trap,? where high prices reduce the feasibility of scaling-up treatment programs, reduced feasibility of treatment decreases the incentives to invest in public health infrastructure, and poor public health infrastructure makes even limited treatment programs less effective than they could otherwise be. I examine four mechanisms designed to increase developing countries? access to affordable drugs. I consider the political economy obstacles to scaling up treatment based on each of these mechanisms, with particular attention paid to the impediments posed by the new global regime on intellectual property rights. I show how each mechanism remains inadequate for realizing the central objective, that of achieving sufficient stability of supply so to stimulate domestic mobilization of resources and thereby escape from the price-infrastructure trap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the research paper "Developing Countries and the Initiation of GATT/WTO Disputes," by Todd Allee. Dataset of potential international trade disputes; Lack of developing country international trade dispute initiation; Conditions under which developing countries initiate internationa trade disputes.

Presents the research paper "Evaluating the Impact of Test-Score Based Decisions on Differential Group Success," by Bernard Grofman and Samuel Merrill. Examples of objective tests as a choice mechanism in pre-industrialized nations; Discussion of the variable threshold model used in the employee selection process; Overview of a lottery-based admissions with a variable threshold versus race-norming as tools for affirmative action.

Abstract: As international businesses come to recognize their obligations with respect to corporate social responsibility, many mining companies have come to frame those obligations in the context of sustainable development. For mining companies with global operations in developing countries, an important question centers around whether their corporate social responsibility policies can contribute to the promotion of sustainable development. Critical to answering that question is the conditions that prevail in the developing countries where mining companies operate. This paper makes the case that multinational mining companies can play a positive role in the developing countries in which they operate, provided certain favourable conditions are present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the link between political instability and the timing of debt restructuring (defaults). Previous empirical work has focused on the effect of political uncertainty on the probability of loan defaults while ignoring any effects on their timing. Anticipated political change under conditions of uncertainty may induce political agents to value the future less and engage in pillage. Such countries are, thus, more likely to accumulate debt and consequently more likely to default. Further, they may accumulate debt faster than others and hence default/restructure sooner than others. I apply survival models to the distribution of times to restructuring in a sample of all developing countries for the period 1979-1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization of finance and concomitant increase in financial crises increased the demand for a new ‘international financial architecture.’ Most of the scholarly and policy focus has centered on the role of the international financial institutions (IFIs) - the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. This paper argues that focusing on the IFIs overlooks the ability of the economic great powers to substitute governance structures as a means of advancing their common preferences. Because financial regulation produces a cleavage of interests between the developed and developing states, the developed great powers have relied on club organizations and forum-shopping among substitutable governance structures to create new modes of coordination. This argument is demonstrated by reviewing the development of new financial codes and standards in the wake of the Mexican and Asian financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the link between domestic politics and foreign direct investment flows. I argue that FDI flows will be larger when labor is more influential, and smaller when capital owners are. Following the trade-theoretic literature I derive actors’ preferences from their position in the economy. A formal model explores the conditions under which labor will take a position that is pro-foreign capital, while domestic capital would oppose. The relative influence of labor in domestic politics may work as a reassurance to foreign investors. In the empirical section I try to assess whether the conditions described in the model are generalizable. Tests conducted on a cross section of 34 developing and developed countries show that partisan effects might be at play: left-right orientation of the chief executive in the host country has a statistically significant effect on the amount of FDI that flows into the country. Countries ruled by the left appear to receive more FDI. Additional tests on a panel of 14 OECD countries over a 22-year span seemingly confirm these predictions: FDI flows are larger in countries and years where the left is in power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political science, rational and bounded learning are commonly studied as two opposing explanations of policy choice. In this paper, I use a rational learning approach to advance conclusions about bounded learning, showing that the two concepts need not necessarily be incompatible. By examining the decision of a set of developing countries to open up their trade regimes and a rational learning model, I show that countries are particularly influenced by the choices of neighbouring countries and by particularly successful policy experiences. These are two typical contentions of the bounded learning literature. I also take advantage of the discussion on rational vs. bounded learning to explore more general issues regarding the diffusion of policy innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-Cold War era, climate change, landmines, debt relief and a number of other issues emerged to re-shape the agenda of decision-makers in the advanced industrialized world. The primary advocates of these normative issues are motivated not by their own material self-interests but broader notions of right and wrong. What is the primary logic that contributes to the domestic acceptance of these moral commitments? International relations scholars identify persuasion as the primary way in which states are ‘convinced’ that a norm-based policy is worth accepting. How should we characterize this process of persuasion? Is this the right term to describe the actions of transnational protest movements? Through a case study of the Jubilee 2000 campaign for developing country debt relief, I offer an account of persuasion based on strategic framing by advocates to get the attention of decision-makers. This paper emphasizes the rhetorical and framing strategies that are used to try to tip the political balance in support of normative agendas but ultimately ascribes these a different character than either coercion or Habermasian communicative action. Such strategic but not narrowly self-interested activity allows weak actors to leverage existing value traditions to build broader coalitions of political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the patterns of capital account liberalization in the developing world (defined as low and middle income countries), based on a new 0-9 scale of capital account openness for 157 developing countries over the period 1973-2001. In particular, our findings suggest that pressed for capital, countries with low levels of economic development, low inflation and savings rates and floating exchange rates are associated with more open capital accounts in the developing world. High reliance on trade is also associated with capital account liberalization, which could reflect the political power of the export sector, which benefits from open capital accounts. Governments with higher public expenditures tend to have lower capital account openness measures which suggests a concern by governments of developing countries that capital mobility might erode an already limited tax base. Finally, democratic regimes headed by right-leaning governments tend to lower restrictions on the capital account, arguably because authoritarian regimes use closure as a method of protecting their ability to manipulate domestic economic activity in favor of their supporters and left-leaning governments may be concerned with protecting the tax base for public expenditures (as discussed above). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital divide between industrialized and developing countries has become one of the central features of the international political economy. While it threatens to exacerbate existing global inequalities, information technology itself presents enormous possibilities for countries to hasten along development paths. In this paper, I explore the ways in which information technologies (ITs) can impact developmental outcomes. I argue that analytic approaches concerning IT-driven development strategies and assistance have often glossed over two central issues: (1) the multiple and sometimes conflicting motivations of developing countries for IT adoption and diffusion; and (2) the political, economic, and social context in which IT operates, and the institutional and human capacity necessary to facilitate its use. I conclude by considering whether particular information technologies, such as open source and free software (OSFS), for example, may have the potential to transform incentives and institutions. If this is indeed the case, development policies - both government- and donor-led - focused on IT use and diffusion may be able to overcome many of the usual pitfalls encountered by more traditional development strategies, as long at they frontally address the broader contextual issues. Such an approach recognizes that information technologies, rather than end products themselves, are a mechanism for development through wider social processes that are anchored in local needs and aimed at achieving diverse objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the effects of military expenditures on macroeconomic performance is an important topic of study and debate. In this paper we examine an important, yet relatively unexamined element of this debate, the effect of military expenditures on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). In a number of empirical tests we study the effects of military expenditures on FDI for over 100 countries from 1980-1997. Our primary result is that military expenditures generally have a negative impact on FDI inflows from 1980-1998, but this results varies greatly by level of development. In the less developed non-OECD countries, military expenditures are associated with large decreases in FDI inflows. In the developed countries of the OECD, we find that there is some, although limited, evidence that military expenditures are associated with higher levels of FDI inflows. Our final set of empirical tests estimate the impact of changing levels of FDI inflows on both developed and less developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many developing countries around the world and in Latin America have made a costly trade-off: rapid economic development in exchange for environmental decline. Now as these countries begin to approach higher levels of development, social movements are calling out for better environmental policies and sustainable development. How can these organizations be most effective in their political context? This paper examines the case of the Chilean environmental movement and specifically addresses the factors influencing social movement effectiveness in developing countries following a democratic transition. I argue that neither tactics nor political opportunity alone is a sufficient explanation of social movement outcomes. Instead, we need to examine how political opportunities condition the effectiveness of different tactics. To empirically examine this theory, I analyze quantitative time series data on the activities of two environmental organizations and corresponding government policies between 1994 and 2000. I find strong empirical support for the proposed theory and conclude that as the Chilean public becomes less confident with democracy, the effectiveness of contentious tactics increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After September 11 there has been much speculation about the Internet as a tool that terrorists have used to disseminate and propagate their cause. With the increase in the usage of the Internet worldwide, it would be interesting to determine how it has affected politics in selected countries, especially those that have been designated as being friendly to terrorists. Encouraged by feedback from the paper presented at the American Political Science Association meeting three years ago, I have embarked on research about the use of the Internet in several countries representative of those in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, as well as those which have been tagged as friendly to the terrorist cause. The focus of attention is on how the net is being used by governments, by interest groups, by grassroots organizations and by individual citizens to enhance their knowledge of what is going on in their countries and in the world. It also takes a look at how it has become an instrument of information dissemination and at times used to move people to action against existing regimes. Commonalities and differences in country approaches to the use of the Internet in terms of maintaining order, sustaining freedom and widening equality will be analyzed as well so that patterns and conclusions about the political uses of the Internet in Third World countries can be drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to empirically investigate international aspects of democratization in the developing world. Our empirical analysis shows that the effect of democratic diffusion is contingent upon the difference of political power, wealth, and population between countries. In addition, contrary to the existing explanation about the role of IGOs and foreign aid, our analytical results reveal that they are to some extent negatively related to democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how foreign aid conditions the influence of bilateral trade in the diffusion of collective labor rights from developed to developing nations. Prior research suggests that developing countries ratchet up their laws pertaining to collective labor rights in response to pressures from firms, consumers and activist groups in the developed countries that purchase their exports. We posit that, although foreign aid can be used to improve human and labor rights in recipient nations via aid conditionality, foreign aid has an unintended and negative effect on the trade-related diffusion of labor laws. By providing resources to recipient governments, it reduces the trade-based political leverage of pro-labor actors located in importing countries. We hypothesize that as foreign aid increases, all else equal, developing governments are likely to be less concerned about the economic benefits of trade and, therefore, less responsive to tradebased pressures to improve collective labor rights. We test our argument in a panel of 88 developing countries that have received Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the time period 1985-2002. We find that when foreign aid levels are low, bilateral trade-based pressures lead to improvement in collective labor rights. As aid levels rise, however, the bilateral-trade based effects are no longer significant. Importantly, our results hold even when we control for domestic factors such as levels of democracy, governing party ideology, and strength of labor that might affect governmental incentives towards enactment of labor laws. Our findings also hold when bilateral aid and multilateral aid are examined separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances have become an important source of income for many people in the developing world. How do governments respond to the increasing inflow of remittances from abroad? Previous studies have argued formally and empirically that remittances incentivize governments to distribute less and consume more. As governments see that households receive additional income from family abroad, then there may be no perceived benefit in distributing transfers and subsides or spending on public goods. The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that remittances decrease the probability a municipality participates in a conditional cash transfer program in El Salvador. I will use municipal-level Salvadoran data to investigate the political influence of remittances. Furthermore, to get around potential endogeneity, data from the American Community Surveys and the geographic distribution of Salvadoran migrants in the United States will be used to instrument for remittances. The use of American data will take into account the exposure a Salvadoran municipality has to migration and remittances. Using both American and Salvadoran data, a municipalitys emigrant population and estimated income abroad can only affect the likelihood that a municipality is selected for the poverty-reduction program through remittances. This study on distributive politics will account for the transnational dynamic that plays a vital role in Salvadoran society as it does in other countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]