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This paper investigates the relationship between individuals' attitudes towards fairness and their views about tax compliance in developing countries. It argues that individuals' attitudes regarding fairness shape their views about paying taxes and their ethical stances regarding tax evasion. Using survey data for 18 major cities in Latin America, we find that individuals who are highly sensitive to fairness are less likely to consider paying taxes as a civic duty and more likely to justify tax evasion. These attitudes toward tax compliance are not inelastic. We also find evidence that individualst argues about reciprocity and merit mediate the effect of fairness on personal views about tax compliance. Finally, this paper shows that the heuristics people use to explain their position in the income distribution make them sensitive to inequality, and it affects their tax morale. These findings help us better understand the concept of reciprocity and provide valuable lessons on the urgent task of expanding fiscal capacity to promote economic growth and inequality in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue examines environmental governance, conceptualized as environmental protections, support for sustainable development, and the regulation of large-scale development projects. Through analysis of dynamics during the commodities super-cycle of the 2000s–2010s, contributors explore the multifaceted ways that societal actors interact with the state to support, oppose, or modify environmental governance, with a focus on communities impacted by export activities and economic elites who favor their expansion. Several papers seek to understand the governance of sectors—mining, oil, and soy. Others begin with natural areas threatened by development—urban wetlands and forests. As a collection, the papers reveal three commonalities that affect the extent to which environmental governance institutions address demands of impacted communities: (1) the question of whether a policymaking process takes place in reaction to mobilizing, or whether it proactively engages environmental questions as they pertain to local populations; (2) strategies by civil society, and above all impacted residents, to ensure the implementation of environmental policies; and (3) debates over knowledge, including community efforts to harness expertise and information to counter paradigms advanced by business actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research shows that domestic unrest, and especially violent conflict, raises political risk and discourages foreign direct investment (FDI). However, prior work primarily has studied private Western multinational corporations, not authoritarian China, the second largest overseas investor, which has both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and privately-owned enterprises (POEs). This paper investigates the effects of domestic conflict on overseas Chinese FDI. We first compare Chinese SOE and POE investments in host states facing political unrest. Next, we disaggregate political unrest, examining the effect of violent and non-violent campaigns on Chinese SOEs and POEs. We then disaggregate the sector of FDI inflows. Contrary to prior conflict studies, we find host states under political unrest, and specifically violent campaigns, attract Chinese SOEs no matter the economic sector, whereas POEs are more risk averse. Our findings show that Chinese SOEs favor higher risk investments, suggesting the need for theoretical nuance in the domestic conflict and FDI literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donors have strongly advocated decentralization on the grounds that it broadens the participation of citizens in development processes, thereby increasing government responsiveness to their needs. Although there have been studies seeking to establish the veracity of this claim, they remain weak on two fronts. One, while wealth differentials affect citizen participation, these studies approach citizens as a homogenous group. Two, participation is mostly viewed narrowly—participation in elections. Drawing on empirical data from Ghana's decentralization reform, this paper addresses these gaps by questioning how pro-poor citizen participation in decentralized development planning has been. I argue that although Ghana's decentralization was propagated on championing pro-poor grassroots participation in governance and development, in reality, participation is elitist and has failed to reflect the voices of the poor. My findings demonstrate that the participation structures and processes used in local development planning are unfavourable to the poor in many respects. Elite and representative participation is promoted to the detriment of broad citizen participation. This exclusion is resulting in surging apathy of citizens towards the district assemblies—institutions hitherto trusted as their development champions. This paper concludes that the poor will remain voiceless despite decentralization unless the structural barriers to their participation are tackled in decentralization design and praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, agribusiness expansion in Argentina involved the exponential growth of pesticide use throughout the country. Pesticide exposure has become a widespread problem in rural areas and farming towns, but protests and conflicts about this issue are the exception rather than the norm. Why? Based on archival work, interviews, and ethnographic observations, in this paper, we scrutinize pesticide governance at the subnational scale to elucidate this puzzle, focusing on a) informal arrangements (face-to-face negotiations between pesticide users and people affected by them), b) juridical conflicts (lawsuits against farmers over exposure of people and crops to herbicides), and c) regulatory challenges (when rural populations and environmentalists push for local ordinances to curb pesticide exposure). We find that local cultural codes encourage informal agreements and that social inequalities prevent conflicts from arising in the public sphere. The interventions of social movements and civil society organizations (or lack thereof) and the mobilization of expertise also shape pesticide governance. Our analysis highlights that pesticide governance is context-dependent or situated, and informed by subtle but significant power asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the growing global demand for minerals and new energy sources, governments in the Global South advance policy interventions to improve the unequal distribution of the cost and benefits of resource extraction. This paper explains the politics behind the implementation of the Closing Development Gaps (CDG) Plan, a new redistributive plan on behalf of Amazonian Indigenous peoples near the oil circuit in the Loreto region of Peru. It emphasizes the long-lasting impact of mobilizing strategies of indigenous organizations, which relayed critical information to policymakers about the claims both old and new of Indigenous peoples neighboring the oil circuit. It also draws attention to the permeability of state institutions, which allowed newer state agencies with distinct policy streams to advance new solutions to old problems. While the CDG Plan seeks to improve resource governance by focusing on infrastructure gaps (e.g., water and sanitation, electrification), it excludes the "political gaps" and the most contentious claims related to the environment that have moved Amazonian Indigenous peoples into struggle in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental governance in the mining sector, focusing on the case of CODELCO, a Chilean copper mining company. The study examines the factors that triggered changes in CSR strategies and the types of organizational changes that were introduced. The article argues that CSR strategies in the mining sector are influenced by a combination of national and subnational factors, including tightening environmental regulations, social conflicts, and reputational crises. The paper contributes to the literature on CSR and environmental governance by providing empirical evidence and proposing a three-level institutional framework to analyze the evolution of CSR. [Extracted from the article]

Under what conditions do incumbents support, tolerate, or try to rein in armed groups within their borders? The paper argues that incumbents strategize toward armed groups in ways that help them manage the ruling coalition and remain in power. I find that incumbents support armed groups in provinces where provincial politicians have defected from the ruling coalition to opposition parties, recruiting armed groups to deliver the province in national elections with fraud and violence and punish elite defectors. Where incumbents are not fighting to keep provinces in the ruling coalition, I show that they tolerate non-dissident groups that enjoy social contracts with local communities, and try to contain their dissident counterparts. Incumbents are likely to repress predatory armed groups, dissident and non-dissident alike. Doing so helps boost elite and mass support for incumbents and project central government power into the province. The argument was inductively built with comparative case studies from Nigeria and then evaluated in Kenya. The findings contribute to an important research agenda on government-armed group relationships and carry implications for security sector aid and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, work on the natural resource curse thesis has extended to testing the effects of natural resources on public health. Focusing on the case of malaria, this paper examines the effects of the interaction between resource dependence and political institutions on malaria management. To be more specific, this work argues that in a resource-abundant state, democracy plays an active role in providing health goods to the general public and allocating government funds to public health. Democracies also combat corruption behaviors and diversify economies in a more effective way than their autocratic counterparts. By testing a series of interaction effects between natural resources and democracy, this paper finds a positive and robust effect of democracy on the reduction of malaria death rates in resource-rich states, based on data on malaria deaths during the period of 1990–2016. Resource-rich dictatorships demonstrated the worst performance in malaria control compared with resource-rich democracies and resource-poor democracies and dictatorships. This empirical evidence has policy implications for resource management, public health, and infectious disease control and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some movement parties successfully institutionalize into a functioning party organization while others struggle? This paper argues that not all movement parties institutionalize in the same way. Movement parties that emanate out of a long-term social movement organization face a qualitatively different set of challenges than those that form out of a short-term movement. Routinization—the process of parties developing rules, regulation, and predictable behavior—is a particularly crucial component for short-term movement party institutionalization. When parties emanate out of long-standing social movement organizations, they are advantaged because they already have existing formal rules and regulations. Short-term parties however, are disadvantaged because they lack these organizational structures. Further, short-term movement parties not only need routinization, but must make it a priority; the sequencing of their institutionalization matters. I demonstrate the importance of routinization with the case of Taiwan's New Power Party, a movement party formed out of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. This case shows how struggles to routinize early for short-term movement parties leads to crucial causal mechanisms hindering party institutionalization instead of helping it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of institutional shifts on the strategic choices of Russian firms. It proposes and tests hypotheses of how a shift from a weak to a strong institutional context is likely to affect firms' knowledge accumulation, absorptive capacities and internalisation of operations. Using discriminant analysis, the econometric investigation demonstrates that firms tend to allocate greater resources towards improving their knowledge and absorptive capacity and make more efforts to vertically integrate—in line with improvements in the institutional environment. These investments ensure the survivability and competitiveness of firms in the long term. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the long-term strategic orientation of firms goes hand in hand with rising resource allocations by the nation-state towards economic development. The findings align with the institutionalist political economy views that institutions are the ultimate overseers that allow the market to operate efficiently, especially in emerging market environments. The paper is also instructive to other developing economies about the need to strengthen their institutional environments, which supports the long-term orientation of firms and has a positive impact on economic development. The analysis does not take into account the impact of sanctions on Russian business and economy, post the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict with Ukraine. Nor does it consider the impact of COVID-19 on the economy. As such, the study attempts to constitute an untainted comparison of two paths of transition on Russian firms—shock therapy, vis-à-vis, an institutional political economy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development economics has long focused on growth patterns to explain countries' ability to catch up and forge ahead. We argue, however, that resilience to economic shrinking matters more. Using the examples of Brazil and Indonesia, we propose that a framework consisting of social capabilities—namely structural transformation, autonomy, and inclusion—can explain why Indonesia is more resilient to economic shrinking than Brazil and why the country is more likely to be successful in its catching-up process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike prevailing research methodologies in the interdisciplinary field of global health, feminist methodologies allow researchers to unsettle the premises and assumptions of the field. This paper describes how we mobilize transnational feminist ethnography in our research on HIV in India and postabortion care in Senegal. Transnational feminist perspectives enable us to re-embed HIV prevention and post-abortion care in the politics of gender and sexuality and in postcolonial histories of health governance. They consider the role of gender and sexuality not just in terms of gendered health inequalities, but also in terms of how global health problems are defined, managed, measured, and contested. We outline how our projects put this lens into practice by pushing the methodological boundaries of time, scale, and scope and through a historicized, multisited, and multiscalar approach that triangulates multiple sources of data. Feminist ethnography requires that we turn the critical gaze upon ourselves, reflecting on multiple and shifting personal and professional positionalities during and after fieldwork and our ethical commitments to our interlocutors. While acknowledging the significant personal, institutional, and professional challenges of using feminist methodologies, especially given the dominant modes of research in global health, we urge greater consideration, among both advanced and early scholars, of the possibilities they offer for studying global health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential access to life-saving COVID-19 vaccines reveals the inequitable distribution of wealth and power in the global system. While several countries have developed homegrown vaccines to avoid being priced out of markets dominated by transnational drug companies, Brazil—a country with a significant research and pharmaceutical base—lagged behind those of other middle-income countries. Why? This paper blends insights from dependency theory and the theory of global capitalism to demonstrate how political coalitions, leadership, and normative frameworks negatively affect state capacity and technological development. First, austerity in public investment in research, development, and innovation prior to and during the pandemic limited the amount of resources necessary to create homegrown vaccine candidates. Second, political leadership informed by science denialism did not prioritize the development of vaccines and even discouraged their use. The analysis of vaccine development in Brazil reveals that having a pharmaceutical base and strong leadership committed to scientific principles and backed by a political coalition seeking to expand social democratic rights play a vital role in developing treatments and responding to health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The average number of hours we spend at work varies dramatically by country. Previous research focuses on tax policy, social security, and labor market regulation to explain the differences. This paper builds on previous work by focusing on politics. Specifically, it examines the relationship between democracy and the average number of hours worked per person employed. Using data on the supply of labor from the Penn World Tables 9.1, I find there is an important difference between democracies and dictatorships: as GDP/capita increases, individuals in democracies spend fewer hours at work than their counterparts in dictatorships. The results are robust to various specifications of the model that account for selection bias and data that are missing not at random (MNAR). These findings imply that the elections, civil rights, and the political liberties associated with democracy influence the amount of time people spend at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to demystify and characterize China's official development finance by examining lending mechanisms of China's two policy banks—China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China. Using quantitative and qualitative data, the paper shows how and why policy banks implement a peculiar means of development finance, i.e., funding projects in developing countries with relatively high-interest rate loans, differing from low-interest rate development-finance credits from industrial countries. The paper argues that China's official development finance is not only about practicing economic statecraft or facilitating export-led growth; it is also the internationalization of a development-finance model that has facilitated its own development in the past decades. In this model, the state does not play a direct role in allocating fiscal revenue; rather, it plays an indirect role in enhancing creditworthiness of projects and making them financially viable. The "state-supported, market-based" Chinese credits reshape development finance and offer an alternative option for the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that foreign aid undermines tax compliance, and examines three causal mechanisms that may undergird this relationship: By leading the recipient state to under-invest in tax enforcement, substituting for the state in terms of service provision, or reducing state legitimacy. To test these arguments, the paper takes advantage of cross-national surveys on individual tax compliance. The results suggest that higher levels of foreign aid are associated with higher levels of refusals to pay taxes. The paper finds evidence that the causal mechanism is aid leading the state to reduce its enforcement of taxation, but not through the substitution of state services or decreasing state legitimacy. The results suggest that aid can have counter-productive effects for the long-term development of recipient countries by lowering the state's enforcement of taxation, but not by weakening the relationship between state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the methodological and empirical contributions of the various authors in this special symposium, this concluding reflection acknowledges the important role that informality plays in urban and national politics in the global South, even as it proposes a range of alternative ways, this critical topic could and should be inserted into contemporary scholarship in comparative politics. It begins with a discussion of two decades of research on urbanization and economic globalization, thus introducing a wider set of disciplinary concerns than merely urban servicing into the study of informality, ranging from the transformation of property rights regimes in the context of ascendant neo-liberalization to the recent emergence of more decentralized political structures for claim-making and governance. The essay then suggests that greater historical and contextual specificity in the study of informality, along with the methodological innovations highlighted in the papers, will further help reveal the range of responses to informality seen across the different case studies. Specifically, it proposes that closer attention to divergent urban and national pathways of democratization, attention to institutional variations within and across democratic regimes, political party dynamics at the local and national level, and the existence of urban violence, among other factors, will help explain how and why bureaucrats and elected officials may choose to deal differently with the existence of informality. The essay concludes by arguing that informality should be considered as both a form of governance and a means of enacting citizenship. It thus asks scholars to question the longstanding conceptual dichotomies that permeate much of the literature on informality, including the stark conceptual divide between the formal and informal, and instead to recognize that complex, interactive, and iterative relationships between citizens and the state in the arena of informality are what drive urban servicing and sociopolitical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development. Yet, we also know that government policies—e.g., recognizing multiple languages in minority-sizable areas—can attenuate these effects. In this paper, we ask: What are the socioeconomic implications of minority language recognition? We leverage a legal stipulation in Romania as a quasi-experiment: Minority languages are recognized as official in areas where the minority constitutes more than 20% of the population. We argue the recognition of minority languages builds social trust and facilitates efficiency in economic exchanges—mollifying the otherwise detrimental consequences of diversity. Using data at the municipality level, we find that in areas where only Romanian is recognized, ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development—a result consistent with the literature. This effect, however, is absent in areas where a minority language is recognized. The implications suggest that lowering the threshold for language recognition could promote even further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that political brokers pay particular attention to household size, and the age distribution of its members, when allocating scarce indivisible social benefits. Because people usually share their income with other household members, allocating a social benefit to an individual member of a household with n voters is likely to bring more political support than allocating the same benefit to an individual member of a household with n-1 voters. Based on the main Argentine household survey and on personal interviews with 120 brokers, this paper shows that brokers effectively collect information on family size and age composition and allocate scarce temporary public works programs to families with more voters, unintentionally discriminating against families with children not old enough to vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new measure polyarchy for a global sample of 182 countries from 1900 to 2017 based on the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data, deriving from an expert survey of more than 3000 country experts from around the world, with on average 5 experts rating each indicator. By measuring the five components of Elected Officials, Clean Elections, Associational Autonomy, Inclusive Citizenship, and Freedom of Expression and Alternative Sources of Information separately, we anchor this new index directly in Dahl's (1971) extremely influential theoretical framework. The paper describes how the five polyarchy components were measured and provides the rationale for how to aggregate them to the polyarchy scale. We find that personal characteristics or ideological predilections of the V-Dem country experts do not systematically predict their ratings on our indicators. We also find strong correlations with other existing measures of electoral democracy, but also decisive differences where we believe the evidence supports the polyarchy index having higher face validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper seeks to evaluate the role of development financing institutions (DFIs) in fostering renewable energy transformations. Whereas the conventional approach to renewable energy finance emphasizes the bankability of individual projects, we advance an alternative approach for the role of DFIs in overcoming system-level constraints to enhance renewable energy transformations. We identify four constraints, namely, the incumbent entrenchment of fossil fuels, unmet energy demand of energy-intensive industries, weak production capacity of renewable energies, and lack of supporting infrastructure. We argue that DFIs can potentially address these constraints by setting a mission-driven vision, acting as honest brokers to overcome the incumbent entrenchment, scaling up renewable energy financing to make the cost of renewable energies more competitive, incubating nascent renewable energies, and financing supporting infrastructure. We then select representative DFIs to evaluate the role of DFIs in fostering renewable energy transformations. We find that most sampled DFIs have recently prioritized financing renewable energy, supported pilot projects to achieve demonstration effects, and made investments in complementary infrastructure. Yet few DFIs have achieved the economies of scale to bring down the renewable energy price or shape the policy environment in favor of renewable energy in a manner that can trigger significant transformational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data has become one of the most valuable assets for governments and firms. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of how data reshapes international economic relations. This paper explores various aspects of data politics through the lens of China's digital rise and the country's global engagement. I start with the theoretical premise that data differs from traditional strategic assets (e.g., land, oil, and labor), in that it is nonrival and partially excludable. These characteristics have generated externality, commitment, and valuation problems, triggering three fundamental changes in China's external economic relations. First, data's externality problem makes it necessary for states to regulate data or even to pursue data sovereignty. However, clashes over data sovereignty can ignite conflicts between China and other countries. Second, the commitment problem in data use raises global concerns about foreign government surveillance. As data is easier to transfer across borders than physical commodities, Chinese tech companies' investments abroad are vulnerable to national security investigations by foreign regulators. Chinese tech companies, therefore, confront a "deep versus broad" dilemma: deep ties with the Chinese government help promote their domestic business but jeopardize their international expansion. Lastly, data's valuation problem makes traditional measures (e.g., GDP) ill-suited to measure the relative strengths of the world's economies, which may distort perceptions of China and other states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cohesion policy of the European Union has become its primary instrument promoting development in the peripheral member states. The enduring consequences of the 2007-2008 crisis and the economic governance agenda requiring fiscal discipline from the member states have raised the policy’s significance further. However, similar economic inequalities characterize the EU nowadays as several decades ago. The cohesion policy is by no means alone responsible for this, but the reasons for its ambiguous performance deserve further scrutiny. Empirical studies explain variation in fund performance with domestic institutional quality and absorption capacity, but the member states’ fund spending strategies have not been addressed so far. This is puzzling because they are important determinants of the economic effects of EU funds. The paper fills this gap by investigating the spending strategies of the Southern and the Eastern members in two recent programming cycles (2007-2013 and 2014-2020). Assessed on five expenditure categories, the paper reveals that physical infrastructure investments enjoyed priority over long-term growth-generating R&D and human capital projects and that the allocation of EU funds did not reflect domestic development needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two centuries, taxation has not only increased dramatically in level and volume; its structure has also changed: from a heavy reliance on customs revenue in the early nineteenth century to a stronger emphasis on income taxation in the twentieth. A common explanation for this development is the spread of democracy, which supposedly increases redistribution and the size of government. This paper argues that the effect of democratization on taxation depends on the distribution of tax preferences in society. These preferences are not uniform: rural farmers prefer different policies than urban workers. Thus, the impact of democratization varies depending on the urbanization rate. The paper uses a novel dataset providing data on government tax revenue in thirty-one countries in Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan—from as far back as 1800 up to the present day—in order to evaluate the conditional impact of democratization on tax structure. The results show that democracy decreases property taxes in rural countries but instead increases income taxes and decreases excise and consumption taxes in more urbanized states. These results are robust to different estimation methods, a number of control variables, such as interstate warfare, and to alternative measurements of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of local government form on fiscal outcomes in Indonesia. The form of local government, that is, whether it is headed by a popularly (directly) elected or parliament appointed (indirectly elected) executive, is exogenously determined and therefore tax, expenditure, and efficiency effects of interest are well identified. The paper finds that the direct election of local government executives has no influence on the generation of own-source taxes but that local governments with directly elected heads spend less, especially on infrastructure, and save more compared to their counterparts with indirectly elected executives. Local governments with directly elected heads also spend more efficiently in pursuit of service outcomes than local governments with indirectly elected officials. Efficiency effects are found to be robust across education, health, and infrastructure sectors. A plausible underlying argument is that districts led by directly elected executives are relatively less corrupt than are local governments with indirectly elected heads and that this reduced corruption leads to declining spending on rent-seeking intensive infrastructure projects and more efficient use of fiscal resources in general. The investigation provides general support for the continuation of direct local elections in Indonesia, which have lately come under attack by some national politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to build state capacity in developing countries are often predicated on the assumption that external partners can help states improve their effectiveness and earn legitimacy by providing aid for public service provision. In a theory-building exercise, this paper advances a typology of aid dynamics in order to afford a granular picture of how development assistance for public service provision interacts with internal governance processes in recipient countries. Developing a conjunctural conceptualization of aid dynamics, we articulate how the impact of foreign aid depends not just on how much money is involved but also on whether donors or recipient governments are more influential in designing and implementing aid programs. We illustrate the descriptive utility of this typology by applying it to our empirical research on aid in the health and education sectors in Cambodia, Laos, and Uganda. We also probe causal expectations emerging from the typology, anticipating that aid for public service delivery has distinct and separate effects on state effectiveness and legitimacy depending on the precise aid conjuncture through which it is conceived and delivered. We conclude with suggestions for further research on the impact of foreign aid on state–society relations through the lens of public service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do small, grassroots NGOs influence a powerful authoritarian state and its policies? This paper presents data on instances of interaction between China's grassroots NGOs and party-state agencies through which NGOs are able to exert influence on policymaking and implementation by modeling innovations in action. The analysis begins by painting the backdrop against which policy influence occurs: a political context characterized by diminished bureaucratic capacity, policy discretion, and experimentation under hierarchy. It then presents the argument that collaboration between grassroots NGOs and local government agencies can act as a risk mitigation strategy for official innovation in a system of experimentation under hierarchy. Extensive longitudinal field research across six sub-national units shows convergence among grassroots NGOs on a conception of advocacy in action. This expanded conception of advocacy overcomes the dichotomy between advocacy and service delivery functions, and allows for observation of a fuller range of efforts that include 'obstructive' as well as 'instructive' advocacy. Globally, traditional channels of political participation are decreasing in availability and efficacy. This research shows how, as growing numbers of the populace organize to address social and environmental challenges through grassroots organizations, they open alternate channels of political participation, in turn refashioning state practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, Chinese involvement in Latin American infrastructure development has increased dramatically. The influx of Chinese investment along with Chinese construction workers, engineers, and equipment has led scholars and observers to question whether there a distinct model of Chinese infrastructure development. Does China take an integrated approach in Latin America — financing, designing, and executing projects — or does it operate as any other foreign country or company? We develop the concept of infrastructure dominance to answer these questions. Using data on over 400 of the most important public infrastructure projects, we find that China's involvement in projects varies based on the existing institutional constraints of the host country. Where countries have strong institutions, Chinese companies play a role similar to that of other foreign entities involved in infrastructure development. In Latin American countries with weak infrastructure institutions, however, China plays a very different role — it tends to dominate projects. Thus, this paper highlights the adaptability of the Chinese approach and the importance of domestic institutions for shaping the nature of infrastructure development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the outcome of the efforts to economically catch up during the so-called development era in French-speaking West Africa. An attempt is made to measure and discuss key elements of social capability over the period 1930–1980 in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal following Moses Abramovitz' interpretation of social capability. The paper distinguishes between four elements of social capability: degree of structural transformation, social and economic inclusion, the state's autonomy, and its accountability. We find that there was significant but uneven progress in social capability in both countries during the development era. Despite their differences in economic performance, both countries confronted fundamental shared challenges. Most notably, our analysis highlights how persistent lack of broad-based access to economic opportunities played a significant role in disrupting sustained economic and social progress in the two countries. This gives an opportunity to reflect on similarities and differences between the development era and the recent African growth phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing countries, low state capacity frequently is blamed for poor and uneven service delivery. Yet, since state capacity manifests unevenly across space and sectors, identifying which elements of capacity are more likely to enhance service delivery is not straightforward. We examine how subnational variation in capacity affects access to agricultural extension in rural Nepal. We explore six dimensions of state capacity using original household survey data and interviews with local bureaucrats. We find that local knowledge and motivation of bureaucrats play a significant role in shaping service access. By contrast, traditional capacity indicators—including resources, professionalization, and autonomy—matter surprisingly little. These findings suggest that bureaucrats working with fewer but more motivated staff who spend more time in a district are more likely to facilitate citizens' access to agricultural extension. Placebo tests add confidence that relationships are not driven by unobservables. Scholarship on state capacity traditionally has been unable to measure capacity disaggregated by geography and sector, and, as a result, has struggled to link empirically different elements of capacity with service delivery. This paper begins to address this gap and in doing so, offers broader implications for the dynamics of rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]